Robert Salvatore: The Halfling’s Gem

Drizzt knew the sinister legends of such creatures, and he knew their name. “A banshee?” he asked.

Malchor nodded. “To her lair you should go, if you are brave enough, for the banshee has collected a fair hoard of treasure, including one item that would prove invaluable to you, Drizzt Do’Urden.”

He saw that he had the drow’s full attention. Drizzt leaned forward over the table and weighed Malchor’s every word.

“A mask,” the wizard explained. “An enchanted mask that will allow you to hide your heritage and walk freely as a surface elf—or as a man, if that suits you.”

Drizzt slumped back, a bit unnerved at the threat to his very identity.

“I understand your hesitancy,” Malchor said to him. “It is not easy to hide from those who accuse you unjustly, to give credibility to their false perceptions. But think of your captive friend and know that I make this suggestion only for his sake. You may get through the southlands as you are, dark elf, but not unhindered.”

Wulfgar bit his lip and said nothing, knowing this to be Drizzt’s own decision. He knew that even his concerns about further delay could not weigh into such a personal discussion.

“We will go to this lair in the wood,” Drizzt said at last, “and I shall wear such a mask if I must.” He looked at Wulfgar. “Our only concern must be Regis.”

Drizzt and Wulfgar sat atop their mounts outside the Tower of Twilight, with Malchor standing beside them.

“Be wary of the thing,” Malchor said, handing Drizzt the map to the banshee’s lair and another parchment that generally showed their course to the far South. “Her touch is deathly cold, and the legends say that to hear her keen is to die.”

“Her keen?” asked Wulfgar.

“An unearthly wail too terrible for mortal ears to bear,” said Malchor. “Take all care!”

“We shall,” Drizzt assured him.

“We will not forget the hospitality or the gifts of Malchor Harpell,” added Wulfgar.

“Nor the lesson, I hope,” the wizard replied with a wink, drawing an embarrassed smile from Wulfgar.

Drizzt was pleased that his friend had shaken at least some of his surliness.

Dawn came upon them then, and the tower quickly faded into nothingness.

“The tower is gone, yet the wizard remains,” remarked Wulfgar.

“The tower is gone, yet the door inside remains,” Malchor corrected. He took a few steps back and stretched his arm out, his hand disappearing from sight.

Wulfgar jerked in bewilderment.

“For those who know how to find it,” Malchor added. “For those who have trained their minds to the properties of magic.” He stepped through the extradimensional portal and was gone from sight, but his voice came back to them one last time. “Discipline!” he called, and Wulfgar knew himself to be the target of Malchor’s final statement.

Drizzt kicked his horse into motion, unrolling the map as he started away. “Harpell?” he asked over his shoulder, imitating Wulfgar’s derisive tone of the previous night.

“Would that all of the Harpells were like Malchor!” Wulfgar replied. He sat staring at the emptiness that had been the Tower of Twilight, fully understanding that the wizard had taught him two valuable lessons in a single night: one of prejudice and one of humility.

From inside the hidden dimension of his home, Malchor watched them go. He wished that he could join them, to travel along the road of adventure as he had so often in his youth, finding a just course and following it against any odds. Harkle had judged the principles of those two correctly, Malchor knew, and had been right in asking Malchor to help them.

The wizard leaned against the door to his home. Alas, his days of adventure, his days of carrying the crusade of justice on his shoulders, were fading behind him.

But Malchor took heart in the events of the last day. If the drow and his barbarian friend were any indication, he had just helped to pass the torch into able hands.

The assassin, mesmerized, watched as the ruby turned slowly in the candlelight, catching the dance of the flame in a thousand thousand perfect miniatures—too many reflections; no gem could have facets so small and so flawless.

And yet the procession was there to be seen, a swirl of tiny candles drawing him deeper into the redness of the stone. No jeweler had cut it; its precision went beyond a level attainable with an instrument. This was an artifact of magic, a deliberate creation designed, he reminded himself cautiously, to pull a viewer into that descending swirl, into the serenity of the reddened depths of the stone.

A thousand thousand little candles.

No wonder he had so easily duped the captain into giving him passage to Calimport. Suggestions that came from within the marvelous secrets of this gem could not easily be dismissed. Suggestions of serenity and peace, words spoken only by friends…

A smile cracked the usually grim set of his face. He could wander deep into the calm.

Entreri tore himself from the pull of the ruby and rubbed his eyes, amazed that even one as disciplined as he might be vulnerable to the gem’s insistent tug. He glanced into the corner of the small cabin, where Regis sat huddled and thoroughly miserable.

“I can now understand your desperation in stealing this jewel,” he said to the halfling.

Regis snapped out of his own meditation, surprised that Entreri had spoken to him—the first time since they had boarded the boat back in Waterdeep.

“And I know now why Pasha Pook is so desperate to get it back,” Entreri continued, as much to himself as to Regis.

Regis cocked his head to watch the assassin. Could the ruby pendant take even Artemis Entreri into its hold? “Truly it is a beautiful gem,” he offered hopefully, not quite knowing how to handle this uncharacteristic empathy from the cold assassin.

“Much more than a gemstone,” Entreri said absently, his eyes falling irresistibly back into the mystical swirl of the deceptive facets.

Regis recognized the calm visage of the assassin, for he himself had worn such a look when he had first studied Pook’s wonderful pendant. He had been a successful thief then, living a fine life in Calimport. But the promises of that magical stone outweighed the comforts of the thieves’ guild. “Perhaps the pendant stole me,” he suggested on a sudden impulse.

But he had underestimated the willpower of Entreri. The assassin snapped a cold look at him, with a smirk clearly revealing that he knew where Regis was leading.

But the halfling, grabbing at whatever hope he could find, pressed on anyway. “The power of that pendant overcame me, I think. There could be no crime; I had little choice—”

Entreri’s sharp laugh cut him short. “You are a thief, or you are weak,” he snarled. “Either way you shall find no mercy in my heart. Either way you deserve the wrath of Pook!” He snapped the pendant up into his hand from the end of its golden chain and dropped it into his pouch.

Then he took out the other object, an onyx statuette intricately carved into the likeness of a panther.

“Tell me of this,” he instructed Regis.

Regis had wondered when Entreri would show some curiosity for the figurine. He had seen the assassin toying with it back at Garumn’s Gorge in Mithril Hall, teasing Drizzt from across the chasm. But until this moment, that was the last Regis had seen of Guenhwyvar, the magical panther.

Regis shrugged helplessly.

“I’ll not ask again,” Entreri threatened, and that icy certainty of doom, the inescapable aura of dread that all of Artemis Entreri’s victims came to know well, fell over Regis once more.