Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(80)

“Road?”

“The road to Port Llast.”

Bruenor turned his eyes to the west more directly. “Cat went that way. She might’ve found him.”

Off they went, Drizzt easily following the trail—again, too easily.

They had barely gone a hundred yards when they heard a growl up ahead.

“Damned good cat!” Bruenor yelped and charged on, expecting to find Guenhwyvar standing atop the thief.

They did find Guenhwyvar, standing in a small lea, her fur all rumpled, teeth bared, growling angrily.

“Well?” the dwarf called out. “Where in the Nine Hells …?”

Drizzt put a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder to silence him. “The ground,” he said softly, walking past the dwarf toward the cat.

“Eh?”

Bruenor soon understood.

Guenhwyvar was standing in the grass, but the ground beneath the grass was not dark like soil, but white. The cat’s muscles flexed and she leaned to the side, trying to pull up her paw, but alas, she was fully stuck in place.

“Like fly glue,” Drizzt remarked, coming to the edge of the strange, magical patch. “Guen?”

The panther growled unhappily in reply.

“He sticked her to the ground?” Bruenor asked, coming up to Drizzt’s side. “He catched yer cat?”

Drizzt had no answer, other than a concerned sigh. He took out the onyx figurine and bade the cat to be gone. She couldn’t pace, as she usually did when she was slipping from her corporeal form into the gray mist that ushered her to her home on the Astral Plane, but she did diminish to nothingness soon after, leaving Drizzt and Bruenor standing in the lea.

“He got me maps, elf,” the dejected dwarf remarked.

“We’ll find him,” Drizzt promised.

He didn’t tell his friend that the path the drow thief had left was too clear to miss, that it had to have been purposely left, but he decided not to. They were being led for a reason, and Drizzt was fairly confident of where they were being led and who was leading them.

The drow flipped the satchel off his shoulder, dropping it on the table between himself and Jarlaxle.



“I think I got them all,” he said.

“Ye’re not sure?” Athrogate asked from the side of the room. “We’re talkin’ important work here, and ye think ye got ’em?”

Jarlaxle flashed a disarming smile at the dwarf then turned back to Valas Hune, one of his most experienced scouts. “I’m sure you liberated the important ones.”

“Bruenor was laying them out on the ground,” Valas answered. “All of those are in there, and what the dwarf had not yet removed from the satchel. Perhaps he has other maps hidden elsewhere. I cannot be certain—”

“Ain’t ye a scout?”

“Forgive my friend,” Jarlaxle remarked. “This mission has special importance to him.”

“Since he is the one who freed the primordial, you mean?” Valas said, offering a sly look at Athrogate.

His words caught the dwarf by surprise, for who knew of that journey to Gauntlgrym those years before? But then again, Jarlaxle didn’t seem the least bit surprised. Athrogate fixed a suspicious, you-told-them glare on Jarlaxle.

“There is little that escapes the notice of Valas Hune, my friend,” Jarlaxle explained to Athrogate. “Rest assured that he is among a very few who know of the disturbing events in Gauntlgrym.”

“Then why didn’t he make sure he got all the damned maps?”

“King Bruenor is not alone,” Valas Hune reminded. “I have little desire to try to explain my presence lurking about the camp to Drizzt Do’Urden.”

“He is a reasonable fellow,” Jarlaxle said.

“More than a few dead drow wouldn’t agree with that assessment,” Valas replied. “Besides, my friend, you know little of Drizzt of late. I have explored his exploits and talked to those who have traveled beside him, and ‘reasonable’ is not a word I often hear.”

Jarlaxle’s eyebrows betrayed a bit of surprise at that, but he quickly dismissed the look. “You could get to know him better, should you decide to accompany us to Gauntlgrym,” he reminded the scout.

Valas was shaking his head before Jarlaxle ever finished the thought. “A primordial?” he said. “Perhaps we can instead travel to a different plane to do battle with a true god, though I doubt we’d notice the difference in the few heartbeats of life we would have left.”

“I have no intention of doing battle with the primordial.”

“I’d be more concerned with its intentions, were I you. Which I am not, thankfully.” He motioned to the satchel. “There, you have your maps, as you asked.”

“And you have your gold, well-earned,” Jarlaxle replied, tossing him a small bag.

“There’s more,” said Valas Hune. “For no extra cost,” he added, seeing Jarlaxle’s suspicious look.

“They’re on your trail?”

“If not, then Drizzt is not nearly the tracker you claim him to be.”

“And?”

“There is much stirring in the south. The Netherese all but wage war with the Thayans in Neverwinter Wood.”

“Yes, yes, over the Dread Ring.”