Catti-brie pulled her gray cloak about her to hide the dagger and mask she had taken from Regis. Mixed feel  ings assaulted her as she neared Bruenor's private chambers; she hoped both that the dwarf would be there, and that he would not.

How could she leave without seeing Bruenor, her father, one more time? And yet, the dwarf now seemed to Catti-brie a shell of his former self, a wallowing old dwarf waiting to die. She didn't want to see him like that, didn't want to take that image of Bruenor with her into the Underdark.

She lifted her hand to knock on the door to Bruenor's sitting room, then gently cracked the door open instead and peeked in. She saw a dwarf standing off to the side of the burning hearth, but it wasn't Bruenor. Thibbledorf Pwent, the battlerager, hopped about in circles, apparently trying to catch a pesky fly. He wore his sharp  ridged armor (as always), complete with glove nails and knee and elbow spikes, and other deadly points protruding from every plau  sible angle. The armor squealed as the dwarf spun and jumped, an irritating sound if Catti-brie had ever heard one. Pwent's open  faced gray helm rested in the chair beside him, its top spike half as tall as the dwarf. Without it, Catti-brie could see, the battlerager was almost bald, his remaining thin black strands of hair matted greasily to the sides of his head, then giving way to an enormous, bushy black beard.

Catti-brie pushed the door a little farther and saw Bruenor sit  ting before the low burning fire, absently trying to flip a log so that its embers would flare to life again. His halfhearted poke against the glowing log made Catti-brie wince. She remembered the days not so long ago, when the boisterous king would have simply reached into the hearth and smacked the stubborn log with his bare hand.

With a look to Pwent (who was eating something that Catti-brie sincerely hoped was not a fly), the young woman entered the room,  checking her cloak as she came in to see that the items were prop  erly concealed.

"Hey, there!" Pwent howled between crunchy bites. Even more than her disgust at the thought that he was eating a fly, Catti-brie was amazed that he could be getting so much chewing out of it!

"Ye should get a beard!" the battlerager called, his customary greeting. From their first meeting, the dirty dwarf had told Catti  brie that she'd be a handsome woman indeed if she could only grow a beard.

"I'm working at it, " Catti-brie replied, honestly glad for the lev  ity. "Ye've got me promise that I haven't shaved me face since the day we met." She patted the battlerager atop the head, then regret  ted it when she felt the greasy film on her hand.

"There's a good girl, " Pwent replied. He spotted another flitting insect and hopped away in pursuit.

"Where ye going?" Bruenor demanded sharply before Catti-brie could even say hello.

Catti-brie sighed in the face of her father's scowl. How she longed to see Bruenor smile again! Catti-brie noted the bruise on Bruenor 's forehead, the scraped portion finally scabbing over. He had reportedly gone into a tirade a few nights before, and had actu  ally smashed down a heavy wooden door with his head while two frantic younger dwarves tried to hold him back. The bruise com  bined with Bruenor 's garish scar, which ran from his forehead to the side of his jaw, across one socket where his eye had once been, made the old dwarf seem battered indeed!

"Where ye going?" Bruenor asked again, angrily.

"Settlestone, " the young woman lied, referring to the town of barbarians, Wulfgar's people, down the mountain from Mithril Hall's eastern exit. "The tribe's building a cairn to honor Wulfgar's memory." Catti-brie was somewhat surprised at how easily the lie came to her; she had always been able to charm Bruenor, often using half truths and semantic games to get around the blunt truth, but she had never so boldly lied to him.

Reminding herself of the importance behind it all, she looked the red bearded dwarf in the eye as she continued. "I'm wanting to be there before they start building. If they're to do it, then they're to do it right. Wulfgar deserves no less."

Bruenor 's one working eye seemed to mist over, taking on an even duller appearance, and the scarred dwarf turned away from Catti-brie, went back to his pointless fire poking, though he did manage one slight nod of halfhearted agreement. It was no secret in Mithril Hall that Bruenor didn't like talking of Wulfgar, he had even punched out one priest who insisted that Aegis fang could not, by dwarvish tradition, be given a place of honor in the Hall of Dumathoin, since a human, and no dwarf, had wielded it.

Catti-brie noticed then that Pwent's armor had ceased its squealing, and she turned about to regard the battlerager. He stood by the opened door, looking forlornly at her and at Bruenor's back. With a nod to the young woman, he quietly (for a rusty armored battlerager) left the room.

Apparently, Catti-brie was not the only one pained by the pitiful wretch Bruenor Battlehammer had become.

"Ye've got their sympathy, " she remarked to Bruenor, who seemed not to hear. "All in Mithril Hall speak kindly of their wounded king."

"Shut yer face, " Bruenor said out of the side of his mouth. He still sat squarely facing the low fire.

Catti-brie knew that the implied threat was lame, another reminder of Bruenor's fall. In days past, when Bruenor Battle  hammer suggested that someone shut his face, he did, or Bruenor did it for him. But, since the fights with the priest and with the door,  Bruenor 's fire, like the one in the hearth, had played itself to its end.

"Do ye mean to poke that fire the rest o' yer days?" Catti-brie asked, trying to incite a fight, to blow on the embers of Bruenor 's pride.

"If it pleases me, " the dwarf retaliated too calmly.

Catti-brie sighed again and pointedly hitched her cloak over the side of her hip, revealing the magical mask and Entreri's jeweled dagger. Even though the young woman was determined to under  take her adventure alone, and did not want to explain any of it to Bruenor, she prayed that Bruenor would have life enough within him to notice.

Long minutes passed, quiet minutes, except for the occasional crackle of the embers and the hiss of the unseasoned wood.

"I'll return when I return!" the flustered woman barked, and she headed for the door. Bruenor absently waved her away over one shoulder, never bothering to look at her.

Catti-brie paused by the door, then opened it and quietly closed it, never leaving the room. She waited a few moments, not believing that Bruenor remained in front of the fire, poking it absently. Then she slipped across the room and through another doorway, to the dwarf's bedroom.

Catti-brie moved to Bruenor's large oaken desk, a gift from Wulfgar's people, its polished wood gleaming and designs of Aegis fang, the mighty warhammer that Bruenor had crafted,  carved into its sides. Catti-brie paused a long while, despite her need to be out before Bruenor realized what she was doing, and looked at those designs, remembering Wulfgar. She would never get over that loss. She understood that, but she knew, too, that her time of grieving neared its end, that she had to get on with the business of living. Especially now, Catti-brie reminded herself, with another of her friends apparently walking into peril.

In a stone coffer atop the desk Catti-brie found what she was looking for: a small locket on a silver chain, a gift to Bruenor from Alustriel, the Lady of Silverymoon. Bruenor had been thought dead,  lost in Mithril Hall on the friends' first passage through the place. He had escaped from the halls sometime later, avoiding the evil gray dwarves who had claimed Mithril Hall as their own, and with Alustriel's help, he found Catti-brie in Longsaddle, a village to the southwest. Drizzt and Wulfgar had left long before that, on their way south in pursuit of Regis, who had been captured by the assas  sin Entreri.

Alustriel had then given Bruenor the magical locket. Inside was a tiny portrait of Drizzt, and with this device the dwarf could gener  ally track the drow. Proper direction and distance from Drizzt could be determined by the degrees of magical warmth emanating from the locket.

The metal bauble was cool now, colder than the air of the room,  and it seemed to Catti-brie that Drizzt was already a long way from her.

Catti-brie opened the locket and regarded the perfect image of her dear drow friend. She wondered if she should take it. With Guenhwyvar she could likely follow Drizzt anyway, if she could get on his trail, and she had kept it in the back of her mind that, when Bruenor learned the truth from Regis, the fire would come into his eyes, and he would rush off in pursuit.

Catti-brie liked that image of fiery Bruenor, wanted her father to come charging in to her aid, and to Drizzt's rescue, but that was a child's hope, she realized, unrealistic and ultimately dangerous.

Catti-brie shut the locket and snapped it up into her hand. She slipped out of Bruenor's bedroom and through his sitting room (with the red bearded dwarf still seated before the fire, his thoughts a million miles away), then rushed through the halls of the upper levels, knowing that if she didn't get on her way soon, she might lose her nerve.

Outside, she regarded the locket again and knew that in taking it, she had cut off any chances that Bruenor would follow. She was on her own.

That was how it had to be, Catti-brie decided, and she slipped the chain over her head and started down the mountain, hoping to get to Silverymoon not so long after Drizzt.

He slipped as quietly and unobtrusively as he could along the dark streets of Menzoberranzan, his heat seeing eyes glowing ruby red. All that he wanted was to get back to Jarlaxle's base, back with the drow who recognized his worth.

"Waela rivvil!" came a shrill cry from the side.

He stopped in his tracks, leaned wearily against the pile of bro  ken stone near an unoccupied stalagmite mound. He had heard those words often before, always those two words, said with obvi  ous derision.

"Waela rivvil!" the drow female said again, moving toward him,  a russet tentacle rod in one hand, its three eight foot long arms writhing of their own accord, eagerly, as though they wanted to lash out with their own maliciousness and slap at him. At least the female wasn't carrying one of those whips of fangs, he mused,  thinking of the multi snake headed weapons many of the higher  ranking drow priestesses used.

He offered no resistance as she moved to stand right in front of him, respectfully lowered his eyes as Jarlaxle had taught him. He suspected that she, too, was moving through the streets inconspicu  ously, why else would a drow female, powerful enough to be car  rying one of those wicked rods, be crawling about the alleys of this,  the lesser section of Menzoberranzan?

She issued a string of drow words in her melodic voice, too quickly for this newcomer to understand. He caught the words quarth, which meant command, and harl'iI'cik, or kneel, and expected them anyway, for he was always being commanded to kneel.

Down he went, obediently and immediately, though the drop to the hard stone pained his knees.

The drow female paced slowly about him, giving him a long look at her shapely legs, even pulling his head back so that he could stare up into her undeniably beautiful face, while she purred her name, "Jerlys."

She moved as if to kiss him, then slapped him instead, a sting  ing smack on his cheek. Immediately, his hands went to his sword and dirk, but he calmed and reminded himself of the consequences.

Still the drow paced about him, speaking to herself as much as to him. "Iblith, " she said many times, the drow word for excrement,  and finally he replied with the single word "abban, " which meant ally, again as Jarlaxle had coached him.

"Abban del darthiir!" she cried back, smacking him again on the back of his head, nearly knocking him flat to his face.

He didn't understand completely, but thought that dart hiir had something to do with the faeries, the surface elves. He was begin  ning to figure out then that he was in serious trouble this time, and would not so easily get away from this one.

"Abban del darthiir!" Jerlys cried again, and this time her tentacle rod, and not her hand, snapped at him from behind, all three tenta  cles pounding painfully into his right shoulder. He grabbed at the wound and fell flat to the stone, his right arm useless and the waves of pain rolling through him.

Jerlys struck again, at his back, but his sudden movement had saved him from a hit by all three of the tentacles.

His mind raced. He knew that he had to act fast. The female kept taunting him, smacking her rod against the alley walls, and every so often against his bleeding back. He knew for certain then that he had caught this female by surprise, that she was on a mis  sion as secret as his own, and that he would not likely walk away from this encounter.

One of the tentacles slapped off the back of his head, dazing him. Still his right arm remained dead, weakened by the magic of a simultaneous three strike.

But he had to act. He moved his left hand to his right hip, to his dirk, then changed his mind and brought it around the other side.

"Abban del darthiir!" Jerlys cried again, and her arm came for  ward.

He spun about and up to meet it, his sword, not of drow make,  flaring angrily as it connected with the tentacles. There came a green flash, and one tentacle fell free, but one of the others snaked its way through the parry and hit him in the face.

"Jivvin!" the amused drow cried the word for play, and she elaborated most graciously, thanking him for his foolish retaliation,  for making it all such fun.

"Play with this, " he said back at her, and he came forward,  straight ahead with the sword.

A globe of conjured darkness fell over him.

"Jivvin!" Jerlys laughed again and came forward to smack with her rod. But this one was no novice in fighting dark elves, and, to the female's surprise, she did not find him within her globe.

Around the side of the darkness he came, one arm hanging limp, but the other flashing this way and that in a marvelous dis  play of swordsmanship. This was a drow female, though, highly trained in the fighting arts and armed with a tentacle rod. She par  ried and countered, scoring another hit, laughing all the while.

She did not understand her opponent.

He came in a straightforward lunge again, spun about to the left as if to continue with a spinning overhand chop, then reversed his grip on the weapon, pivoted back to the right, and heaved the sword as though it were a spear.

The weapon's tip dove hungrily between the surprised female's breasts, sparking as it sliced through the fine drow armor.

He followed the throw with a leaping somersault and kicked both feet forward so that they connected on the quivering sword hilt, plunging the weapon deeper into the malevolent female's chest.

The drow fell back against the rock pile, stumbling over it until the uneven wall of the stalagmite supported her at a half standing angle, her red eyes locked in a wide stare.

"A pity, Jerlys, " he whispered into her ear, and he softly kissed her cheek as he grasped the sword hilt and pointedly stepped on the writhing tentacles to pin them down on the floor. "What pleasures we might have known."

He pulled the sword free and grimaced as he considered the implications of this drow female's death. He couldn't deny the satis  faction, however, at taking back some of the control in his life. He hadn't gone through all his battles just to wind up a slave!

He left the alley a short while later, with Jerlys and her rod buried under the stones, and with a bounce returned to his step.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***