Robert Salvatore - Streams of Silver

A man working on a ladder (another amusing curiosity—to see a ladder rise up above the phony rails of the fence and come to rest in mid-air against the top of the invisible wall) came to their aid. “Forgot again?” he chuckled at Harkle. “He pointed to the railing off to one side. “Sixth post to your left!”

Harkle shrugged away his embarrassment and moved on.

The companions watched the workman curiously as they passed from the hill, their mounts still tucked under their arms. He had a bucket and some rags and was rubbing several reddish-brown spots from the invisible wall.

“Low-flying birds,” Harkle explained apologetically. “But have no fear, Regweld is working on the problem even as we speak.

“Now we have come to the end of our meeting, though many years shall pass before you are forgotten in the Ivy Mansion! The road takes you right through the village of Longsaddle. You can restock your supplies there—it has all been arranged.”

“Me deepest regards to yerself and yer kin,” said Bruenor, bowing low. “Suren Longsaddle has been a bright spot on a bleary road!” The others were quick to agree.

“Farewell then, Companions of the Hall,” sighed Harkle. “The Harpells expect to see a small token when you at last find Mithril Hall and start the ancient forges burning again!”

“A king’s treasure!” Bruenor assured him as they moved away.

They were back on the road beyond Longsaddle’s borders before noon, their mounts trotting along easily with fully stuffed packs.

“Well, which do ye prefer, elf,” Bruenor asked later that day, “the jabs of a mad soldier’s spear, or the pokings of a wonderin’ wizard’s nose?”

Drizzt chuckled defensively as he thought about the question. Longsaddle had been so different from anywhere he had ever been, and yet, so much the same. In either case, his color singled him out as an oddity, and it wasn’t so much the hostility of his usual treatment that bothered him, as the embarrassing reminders that he would ever be different.

Only Wulfgar, riding beside him, caught his mumbled reply.

“The road.”

“Why do you approach the city before the light of dawn?” the Nightkeeper of the North Gate asked the emissary for the merchant caravan that had pulled up outside Luskan’s wall. Jierdan, in his post beside the Nightkeeper, watched with special interest, certain that this troupe had come from Ten-Towns.

“We would not impose upon the regulations of the city if our business were not urgent,” answered the spokesman. “We have not rested for two days.” Another man emerged from the cluster of wagons, a body limp across his shoulders.

“Murdered on the road,” explained the spokesman. “And another of the party taken. Catti-brie, daughter of Bruenor Battlehammer himself!”

“A dwarf-maid?” Jierdan blurted out, suspecting otherwise, but masking his excitement for fear that it might implicate him.

“Nay, no dwarf. A woman,” lamented the spokeman. “Fairest in all the dale, maybe in all the north. The dwarf took her in as an orphaned child and claimed her as his own.”

“Orcs?” asked the Nightkeeper, more concerned with potential hazards on the road than with the fate of a single woman.

“This was not the work of orcs,” replied the spokesman. “Stealth and cunning took Catti-brie from us and killed the driver. We did not even discover the foul deed until the next morn.”

Jierdan needed no further information, not even a more complete description of Catti-brie, to put the pieces together. Her connection to Bruenor explained Entreri’s interest in her. Jierdan looked to the eastern horizon and the first rays of the coming dawn, anxious to be cleared of his duties on the wall so that he could go report his findings to Dendybar. This little piece of news should help to alleviate the mottled wizard’s anger at him for losing the drow’s trail on the docks.

“He has not found them?” Dendybar hissed at Sydney.

“He has found nothing but a cold trail,” the younger mage replied. “If they are on the docks yet, they are well disguised.”

Dendybar paused to consider his apprentice’s report. Something was out of place with this scenario. Four distinctive characters simply could not have vanished. “Have you learned anything of the assassin, then, or of his companion?”

“The vagabonds in the alleys fear him. Even the ruffians give him a respectfully wide berth.”

“So our friend is known among the bowel-dwellers,” Dendybar mused.

“A hired killer, I would guess,” reasoned Sydney. “Probably from the south—Waterdeep, perhaps, though we should have heard more of him if that were the case. Perhaps even farther south, from the lands beyond our vision.”

“Interesting,” replied Dendybar, trying to formulate some theory to satisfy all the variables. “And the girl?”

Sydney shrugged. “I do not believe that she follows him willingly, though she has made no move to be free of him. And when you saw him in Morkai’s vision, he was riding alone.”

“He acquired her,” came an unexpected reply from the doorway. Jierdan entered the room.

“What? Unannounced?” sneered Dendybar.

“I have news—it could not wait,” Jierdan replied boldly.

“Have they left the city?” Sydney prompted, voicing her suspicions to heighten the anger she read on the mottled wizard’s pallid face. Sydney well understood the dangers and the difficulties of the docks, and almost pitied Jierdan for incurring the wrath of the merciless Dendybar in a situation beyond his control. But Jierdan remained her competition for the mottled wizard’s favor, and she wouldn’t let sympathy stand in the way of her ambitions.

“No,” Jierdan snapped at her. “My news does not concern the drow’s party.” He looked back to Dendybar. “A caravan arrived in Luskan today—in search of the woman.”

“Who is she?” asked Dendybar, suddenly very interested and forgetting his anger at the intrusion.

“The adopted daughter of Bruenor Battlehamer,” Jierdan replied. “Cat—”

“Catti-brie! Of course!” hissed Dendybar, himself familiar with most of the prominent people in Ten-Towns. “I should have guessed!” He turned to Sydney. “My respect for our mysterious rider grows each day. Find him and bring him back to me!”

Sydney nodded, though she feared that Dendybar’s request would prove more difficult than the mottled wizard believed, probably even beyond her skills altogether.

She spent that night, until the early hours of the following morning, searching the alleyways and meeting places of the dockside area. But even using her contacts on the docks and all the magical tricks at her disposal, she found no sign of Entreri and Catti-brie, and no one willing or able to pass along any information that might help her in her search.

Tired and frustrated, she returned to the Hosttower the next day, passing the corridor to Dendybar’s room, even though he had ordered her to report to him directly upon her return. Sydney was in no mood to listen to the mottled wizard’s ranting about her failure.

She entered her small room, just off the main trunk of the Hosttower on the northern branch, below the rooms of the Master of the North Spire, and bolted the doors, further sealing them against unwelcomed intrusion with a magical spell.

She had barely fallen into her bed when the surface of her coveted scrying mirror began to swirl and glow. “Damn you, Dendybar,” she growled, assuming that the disturbance was her master’s doing. Dragging her weary body to the mirror, she stared deeply into it, attuning her mind to the swirl to bring the image clearer. It was not Dendybar that she faced, to her relief, but a wizard from a distant town, a would-be suitor that the passionless Sydney kept dangling by a thread of hope so that she could manipulate him as she needed.