The room’s single door banged open then and a fearsome-looking black-bearded dwarf crashed into the room, a pair of adamantine morningstars strapped diagonally across his back, their heavy balls bouncing around his shoulders.

“Way’s clear,” he said. “Them dark elfs moved off.”

“Clear all the way to Illusk?”

The dwarf nodded. “Come on, then, pretty lady,” he said to Ambergris. “Let’s get ye safe.”

“Indeed,” Jarlaxle agreed. “Safely in a place where you will tell me your tale.”

Ambergris stared at him suspiciously.

“You will,” Jarlaxle assured her, his tone deathly even, every syllable and inflection fully in control and brimming with confidence. “One way or another.”

Ambergris swallowed hard, but eased her mace down to the ground. This one, or these two, had saved her life, no doubt, and she already understood that starting a fight with them might not be the smartest thing she ever did.

They were out across the town in short order, moving to the haunted region of Luskan known as Illusk. From ground level, it seemed no more than an ancient graveyard and ruin, but within those graves were secret tunnels that led to a subterranean section of the city that few knew of. Bregan D’aerthe had appropriated this place of late, turning the underground chambers into their hideout.

“Don’t ye be worryin’,” the rough-looking dwarf assured Ambergris a short while later when they walked around those chambers, dark elves all around, watching them curiously. “Ye’re with Jarlaxle now, and none’ll move against ye.”

“So says …?” Ambergris asked him leadingly.

“Athrogate o’ Adbar at yer service, pretty lady,” he said, dipping a bow.

“Adbar?”

“A long time ago,” Athrogate explained. “Long afore yerself was born. I’ll tell ye me tale, if ye’re interested, but it’ll be waitin’ a bit, until Jarlaxle’s done with ye.”

“If I’m still alive, ye mean.”

“Oh, but ye’ll be alive, don’t ye doubt, bwahahaha!” Athrogate roared. “Jarlaxle’s a fierce enemy, but he’s a fiercer friend, and he’s been namin’ Drizzt and Entreri among his friends for a century and more.”

“He said Entreri wants to kill him.”

“Bah, but a misunderstandin’,” Athrogate assured her.

They came into a lavishly-furnished chamber, full of comfortable pillows and a grand hearth and a grander desk and chair. Jarlaxle waited as the dwarves passed him by, then shut the door.

“Every detail,” he said to Ambergris. “And you can start by telling me why you went to the Shadowfell in the first place.”

“To get the cat.”

“The cat?”

“A friend o’ Drizzt, ye call yerself?” Ambergris asked suspiciously.

“Ah, Guenhwyvar,” Jarlaxle replied knowingly, but then he shook his head as if that made no sense at all to him, which of course, it did not. “All five of you went to rescue—”

“Six,” Ambergris interrupted. “Effron the tiefling led us. Twas himself who telled us that Lord Draygo had Drizzt’s cat.”

Jarlaxle’s eyes widened, and Ambergris could see that he had found some significance in that notion, though what it might be, she did not understand.

The dwarf took a deep breath and got right to the point. “They looked into the eye o’ the beast,” Ambergris began, and she took her time and duly recounted that dark day in the Shadowfell. She noted the wince of this most curious drow when she told him of the medusa and the fate of three of her companions, particularly that of Artemis Entreri, and it seemed an honest reaction of grief.

“So what of Drizzt and this young tiefling, Effron?” Jarlaxle asked when she was finished, and after he had taken a long while to compose himself. “They fell through a trap in the floor, and then?”

Ambergris shrugged. “Out o’ me sight and I was runnin’ for me life.”

“But did you hear from them? Were they crying out below?”

“Nay, I can’no say I did, but the fight was on in full and so I wouldn’t’ve, even if they were screaming from just below the floor. Not that it’s matterin’,” she added, shaking her head. “Lord Draygo’s not one to play with. I seen enough o’ that one in me time with Cavus Dun—” She paused at that slip-up, and at the intrigue it brought to the drow’s handsome face.

“You will tell me about that, as well,” Jarlaxle assured her.

“Aye,” the dwarf said with a nod.

“But first, finish your tale. Why do you say it doesn’t matter?”

“Lord Draygo ain’t known for mercy.”

Jarlaxle nodded. “But as far as you know, they were alive when you fled the castle?”

“Aye,” Ambergris replied. She lowered her eyes. When he put it that way, she sounded like quite the coward.

Jarlaxle nodded, his expression pensive.

“What’re ye thinking?” Athrogate asked.

That broke the drow’s contemplation. He stood up, and nodded. “See to her needs,” he instructed Athrogate, then to Ambergris, he said, “You have done well, fine lady. In surviving that which few might, and you have done well in trusting me. Your words are most appreciated. We will speak again, and soon.”

“And I’m yer prisoner?” she asked.

“You should remain here,” Jarlaxle said. “In fact, I insist upon it. Those three who pursued you will be relentless, I assure you, and you cannot defeat them.”

“So ye’re askin’ me to stay here?” Ambergris asked incredulously. “They’re drow, ye’re drow—”

“They won’t come here,” Jarlaxle assured her. “Even if they do, they’ll not know that you’re here, and surely would not move against you in this place, in any case.”

“Others saw me come in.”

“Trust him,” Athrogate told her, patting her arm.

Jarlaxle nodded at his dwarf sidekick, then tipped his hat to Ambergris and sped out of the room.

“Parise Ulfbinder asked about Drizzt specifically,” Jarlaxle said to Kimmuriel sometime later, in a different room but still in the bowels of Illusk. “This is more than a coincidence.”

“Even so,” Kimmuriel replied, allowing his skepticism to show through. Jarlaxle had presented him with quite a bit of information in the last few moments, and with a proposal that seemed quite risky—and risky to more than Jarlaxle!

“This is bigger than Drizzt,” Jarlaxle reminded him. “The lords of Netheril suspect something of great significance, and they seem to be interested in those they believe favored by the gods, and suspect that Drizzt might be among that group, as a chosen disciple of Lady Lolth.”

Kimmuriel laughed aloud—a rare event for him indeed—at that notion.

“I know you think it preposterous,” Jarlaxle said. “Surely it would seem so, but then, wouldn’t Drizzt Do’Urden prove to be the perfect instigator of that which Lolth most dearly craves? He brought a great share of chaos to Menzoberranzan, after all.

“Nor is it even important whether or not this particular theory of Drizzt is true,” Jarlaxle added. “All that matters is that the Shadovar believe it might be true, and given the movements of the Spider Queen of late, we would be remiss to let this pass.”

“By that reasoning, if you go and find that Drizzt is alive, and somehow manage to bring him back, would we not be bound to turn him over to Tiago Baenre, or to your sister who rules Menzoberranzan?”

“Even if we were so bound, I would not,” Jarlaxle replied honestly and bluntly. “Nor would I allow you to do so.”

“Yet you ask so much of me and of Bregan D’aerthe.”

“Yes,” Jarlaxle answered evenly.

“You are mad. The cost will be enormous—are you willing to pay that for iblith?”

“Yes—to both, and I assure you that I am mad in both meanings of the word.”

“Then I should relieve you of any command.”

“Nay, you should grant me this, with the full force of Bregan D’aerthe.”

“And how will House Baenre and the ruling council of Menzoberranzan view such an action?” Kimmuriel asked.

“Draygo Quick has him because he believes Drizzt to be the Chosen of Lolth. What good citizens of Menzoberranzan might Bregan D’aerthe be if we allowed that to stand?”

Kimmuriel could only laugh again at the unrelenting stubbornness of Jarlaxle.

“Send me to Gromph, I beg,” Jarlaxle said.

Kimmuriel looked at him skeptically. “What you seek from your brother is outside the boundaries of your argument.”

“I demand,” Jarlaxle clarified. “And I will pay my dear brother with my own coin.”

“And any risk this addition entails will be borne by Jarlaxle alone.”

Jarlaxle nodded in agreement, and Kimmuriel closed his eyes, summoning the psionic powers to do as Jarlaxle had requested.

Jarlaxle awaited the magical gate eagerly—indeed, as eagerly as he had looked forward to anything since he had traveled back to the pit in Gauntlgrym with Drizzt, Bruenor, Dahlia, and Athrogate to put the fire primordial back in its magical prison. Jarlaxle felt alive once more.

He understood the odds, and the likelihood that he was far too late for the sake of any of those who had gone to the lair of Draygo Quick.

But Jarlaxle liked long odds. Indeed, he lived for them.

Chapter 22: Agnosticism

TELL ME OF YOUR GODDESS,” DRAYGO QUICK BADE DRIZZT ONE MORNING as they sat for a shared breakfast. “This one you name Mielikki.”

“Are you asking me to proselytize?”

Draygo Quick shrugged. “Perhaps you will convert me. Do you think she would have me?”

Drizzt sat back and stared at Lord Draygo for a long while. “I believe that god is that which you find in your heart,” he answered finally. “Were you to find Mielikki in your heart, were her tenets to sing to you as truth, then it wouldn’t be within the power of any god to have you or reject you. Were you to come to believe those tenets, then you would be of Mielikki.”

“You act as though the gods are no more than names for that which is in your heart.”

Drizzt smiled and nodded, and went back to his food.

“You truly believe that?” Draygo Quick asked, sliding his chair back from the table.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!”

“Why?” Drizzt asked calmly. He realized that he was perturbing the old warlock, and he found that he quite enjoyed it.

“How can it not?” Draygo Quick replied. “Are you positing that, were I to discover these tenets of Mielikki, I would become one of her flock no matter my past?”

“If you found the truth of her tenets, then your past would be a trial of your own conscience, or a matter of justice in retribution for any crimes, but nothing to the goddess.”

“That’s absurd.”