Exile (The Dark Elf Trilogy #2)(56)

“What was that?” Belwar asked one day, stopping his work on the new door blocking their cave opening. Down by the pool, Drizzt apparently had heard the sound as well, for he had dropped the helmet he was using to fetch some water and had drawn both scimitars. He held a hand up to keep the burrow-warden silent, then picked his way back to the ledge for a quiet conversation.

The sound, a loud clacking noise, came again.

“You know it, dark elf?’” Belwar asked softly.

Drizzt nodded. “Hook horrors,” he replied, “possessing the keenest hearing in all the Underdark,” Drizzt kept his recollections of his sole encounter with this type of monster to himself. It had occurred during a patrol exercise, with Drizzt leading his Academy class through the tunnels outside Menzoberranzan. The patrol came upon a group of the giant, bipedal creatures with exoskeletons as hard as plated metal armor and powerful beaks and claws. The drow patrol, mostly through Drizzt’s exploits, had won the day, but what Drizzt remembered most keenly was his belief that the encounter had been an exercise planned by the masters of the Academy, and that they had sacrificed an innocent drow child to the hook horrors for the sake of realism.

“Let us find them,” Drizzt said quietly but grimly. Belwar paused to catch his breath when he saw the dangerous simmer in the drow’s lavender eyes.

“Hook horrors are dangerous rivals,” Drizzt explained, noticing the deep gnome’s hesitation. “We cannot allow them to roam the region.”

Following the clacking noises, Drizzt had little trouble closing in. He silently picked his way around a final bend with Belwar close by his side. In a wider section of the corridor stood a single hook horror, banging its heavy claws rhythmically against the stone as a svirfneblin miner might use his pickaxe.

Drizzt held Belwar back, indicating that he could dispatch the monster quickly if he could sneak in on it without being noticed. Belwar agreed but remained poised to join in at the first opportunity or need.

The hook horror, obviously engaged in its game with the stone wall, did not hear or see the approaching stealthy drow. Drizzt came right in beside the monster, looking for the easiest and fastest way to dispatch it. He saw only one opening in the exoskeleton, a slit between the creature’s breastplate and its wide neck. Getting a blade in there could be a bit of a problem, though, for the hook horror was nearly ten feet tall.

But the hunter found the solution. He came in hard and fast at the hook horror’s knee, butting with both his shoulders and bringing his blades up into the creature’s crotch.

The hook horror’s legs buckled, and it tumbled back over the drow. As agile as any cat, Drizzt rolled out and sprang on top of the felled monster, both his blades coming tip in at the slit in the armor.

He could have finished the hook horror at once; his scimitars easily could have slipped through the bony defenses. But Drizzt saw something-terror?-on the hook horror’s face, something in the creature’s expression that should not have been there. He forced the hunter back inside, took control of his swords, and hesitated for just a second-long enough for the hook horror, to Drizzt’s absolute amazement, to speak in clear and proper drow language, “Please do...not ...kill... me.”





CHAPTER 14

CLACKER


The scimitars slowly eased away from the hook horror’s neck. “Not... as I ... ap-appear,” the monster tried to explain in its halting speech. With each uttered word, the hook horror seemed to become more comfortable with the language. “I am ... pech.”

“Pech?” Belwar gawked, moving up to Drizzt’s side. The svirfneblin looked down at the trapped monster with understandable confusion. “ A bit big you are for a pech,” he remarked.

Drizzt looked from the monster to Belwar, seeking some explanation. The drow had never heard the word before. “Rock children,” Belwar explained to him. “Strange little creatures. Hard as the stone and living for no other reason than to work it.”

“Sounds like a svirfneblin,” Drizzt replied.

Belwar paused a moment to figure out if he had been complimented or insulted. Unable to discern, the burrow-warden continued somewhat cautiously. “There are not many pech about, and fewer still that look like this one!” He cast a doubting eye at the hook horror, then gave Drizzt a look that told the drow to keep his scimitars at the ready.

“Pech ... n’n-no more,” the hook horror stammered, clear remorse evident in its throaty voice. “Pech no more.”

“What is your name?” Drizzt asked it, hoping to find some clues to the truth.

The hook horror thought for a long moment, then shook its great head helplessly. “Pech ... n’n-no more,” the monster said again, and it purposely tilted its beaked face backward, widening the crack in its exoskeleton armor and inviting Drizzt to finish the strike.

“You cannot remember your name?” Drizzt asked, not so anxious to kill the creature. The hook horror neither moved nor replied. Drizzt looked to Belwar for advice, but the burrow-warden only shrugged helplessly.

“What happened?” Drizzt pressed the monster. “You must tell me what happened to you.”

“W-w-w,” The hook horror struggled to reply. “W-wi-wiz-ard. Evil wi-zard.”

Somewhat schooled in the ways of magic and in the unscrupulous uses its practitioners often put it to, Drizzt began to understand the possibilities and began to believe this strange creature. “A wizard changed you?” he asked, already guessing the answer. He and Belwar exchanging amazed expressions. “I have heard of such spells.”