Robert Salvatore: Sojourn

Drizzt was relieved when he found the cat. Guenhwyvar sat calmly in a clearing, one paw casually pinning the boy facedown to the ground. The child was calling out again—for help, Drizzt assumed—but appeared unharmed.

“Come, Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt said quietly, calmly. “Leave the child alone.” Guenhwyvar yawned lazily and complied, padding across the clearing to stand at its master’s side.

The boy remained down for a long moment. Then, summoning his courage, he moved suddenly, leaping to his feet and spinning to face the dark elf and the panther. His eyes seemed wider still, almost a caricature of terror, peeking out from his now dirty face.

“What are you?” the boy asked in the common human language.

Drizzt held his arms out to the sides to indicate that he did not understand. On impulse, he poked a finger into his chest and replied, “Drizzt Do’Urden.” He noticed that the boy was moving slightly, secretly dropping one foot behind the other and then sliding the other back into place. Drizzt was not surprised—and he made certain that he kept Guenhwyvar in check this time—when the boy turned on his heel and sprinted away, screaming “Help! It’s a drizzit!” with every stride.

Drizzt looked at Guenhwyvar and shrugged, and the cat seemed to shrug back.

Nathak, a spindle-armed goblin, made his way slowly up the steep, rocky incline, every step weighted with dread. The goblin had to report his findings—five dead gnolls could not be ignored—but the unfortunate creature seriously doubted that either Ulgulu or Kempfana would willingly accept the news. Still, what options did Nathak have? He could run away, flee down the other side of the mountain, and off into the wilderness. That seemed an even more desperate course, though, for the goblin knew well Ulgulu’s taste for vengeance. The great purple-skinned master could tear a tree from the ground with his bare hands, could tear handfuls of stone from the cave wall, and could readily tear the throat from a deserting goblin.

Every step brought a shudder as Nathak moved beyond the concealing scrub into the small entry room of his master’s cave complex.

“Bouts time yez isses back,” one of the other two goblins in the room snorted. “Yez been gone fer two days!”

Nathak just nodded and took a deep breath.

“What’re ye fer?” the third goblin asked. “Did ye finded the gnolls?”

Nathak’s face blanched, and no amount of deep breathing could relieve the fit that came over the goblin. “Ulgulu in there?” he asked squeamishly.

The two goblin guards looked curiously at each other, then back to Nathak. “He finded the gnolls,” one of them remarked, guessing the problem. “Dead gnolls.”

“Ulgulu won’ts be glad,” the other piped in, and they moved apart, one of them lifting the heavy curtain that separated the entry room from the audience chamber.

Nathak hesitated and started to look back, as though reconsidering this whole course. Perhaps flight would be preferable, he thought. The goblin guards grabbed their spindly companion and roughly shoved him into the audience chamber, crossing their spears behind Nathak to prevent any retreat.

Nathak managed to find a measure of composure when he saw that it was Kempfana, not Ulgulu, sitting in the huge chair across the room. Kempfana had earned a reputation among the goblin ranks as the calmer of the ruling brothers, though Kempfana, too, had impulsively devoured enough of his minions to earn their healthy respect. Kempfana hardly took note of the goblin’s entrance, instead busily conversing with Lagerbottoms, the fat hill giant that formerly claimed the cave complex as his own.

Nathak shuffled across the room, drawing the gazes of both the hill giant and the huge—nearly as large as the hill giant—scarlet-skinned goblinoid.

“Yes, Nathak,” Kempfana prompted, silencing the hill giant’s forthcoming protest with a simple wave of the hand. “What have you to report?”

“Me… me,” Nathak stuttered.

Kempfana’s large eyes suddenly glowed orange, a clear sign of dangerous excitement.

“Me finded the gnolls!” Nathak blurted. “Dead. Killded.”

Lagerbottoms issued a low and threatening growl, but Kempfana clutched the hill giant’s arm tightly, reminding him of who was in charge.

“Dead?” the scarlet-skinned goblin asked quietly.

Nathak nodded.

Kempfana lamented the loss of such reliable slaves, but the barghest whelp’s thoughts at that moment were more centered on his brother’s inevitably volatile reaction to the news. Kempfana didn’t have long to wait.

“Dead!” came a roar that nearly split the stone. All three monsters in the room instinctively ducked and turned to the side, just in time to see a huge boulder, the crude door to another room, hurst out and go skipping off to the side. “Ulgulu!” Nathak squealed, and the little goblin fell facedown to the floor, not daring to look.

The huge, purple-skinned goblinlike creature stormed into the audience chamber, his eyes seething in orange-glowing rage. Three great strides took Ulgulu right up beside the hill giant, and Lagerbottoms suddenly seemed very small and vulnerable.

“Dead!” Ulgulu roared again in rage. As his goblin tribe had diminished, killed either by the humans of the village or by other monsters—or eaten by Ulgulu during his customary fits of anger—the small gnoll band had become the primary capturing force for the lair.

Kempfana cast an ugly glare at his larger sibling. They had come to the Material Plane together, two barghest whelps, to eat and grow. Ulgulu had promptly claimed dominance, devouring the strongest of their victims and, thus, growing larger and stronger. By the color of Ulgulu’s skin, and by his sheer size and strength, it was apparent that the whelp would soon be able to return to the reeking valley rifts of Gehenna.

Kempfana hoped that day was near. When Ulgulu was gone, he would rule; he would eat and grow stronger. Then Kempfana, too, could escape his interminable weaning period on this cursed plane, could return to compete among the barghests on their rightful plane of existence.

“Dead,” Ulgulu growled again. “Get up, wretched goblin, and tell me how! What did this to my gnolls?”

Nathak groveled a minute longer, then managed to rise to his knees. “Me no know,” the goblin whimpered. “Gnolls dead, slashed and ripped.”

Ulgulu rocked back on the heels of his floppy, oversized feet. The gnolls had gone off to raid a farmhouse, with orders to return with the farmer and his oldest son. Those two hardy human meals would have strengthened the great barghest considerably, perhaps even bringing Ulgulu to the level of maturation he needed to return to Gehenna.

Now, in light of Nathak’s report, Ulgulu would have to send Lagerbottoms, or perhaps even go himself, and the sight of either the giant or the purple-skinned monstrosity could prompt the human settlement to dangerous, organized action. “Tephanis!” Ulgulu roared suddenly.

Over on the far wall, across from where Ulgulu had made his crashing entrance, a small pebble dislodged and fell. The drop was only a few feet, but by the time the pebble hit the floor, a slender sprite had zipped out of the small cubby he used as a bedroom, crossed the twenty feet of the audience hall, and run right up Ulgulu’s side to sit comfortably atop the barghest’s immense shoulder.

“You-called-for-me, yes-you-did, my-master,” Tephanis buzzed, too quickly. The others hadn’t even realized that the two-foot-tall sprite had entered the room. Kempfana turned away, shaking his head in amazement.

Ulgulu roared with laughter; he so loved to witness the spectacle of Tephanis, his most prized servant. Tephanis was a quickling, a diminutive sprite that moved in a dimension that transcended the normal concept of time. Possessing boundless energy and an agility that would shame the most proficient halfling thief, quicklings could perform many tasks that no other race could even attempt. Ulgulu had befriended Tephanis early in his tenure on the Material Plane—Tephanis was the only member of the lair’s diverse tenants that the barghest did not claim rulership over—and that bond had given the young whelp a distinct advantage over his sibling. With Tephanis scouting out potential victims, Ulgulu knew exactly which ones to devour and which ones to leave to Kempfana, and knew exactly how to win against those adventurers more powerful than he.