A Dagger at Their Backs He kept his cloak pulled tightly about him, though little light seeped in through the curtained windows, for this was his existence, secretive and alone. The way of the assassin.
While other people went about their lives basking in the pleasures of the sunlight and the welcomed visibility of their neighbors, Artemis Entreri kept to the shadows, the dilated orbs of his eyes focused on the narrow path he must take to accomplish his latest mission.
He truly was a professional, possibly the finest in the entire realms at his dark craft, and when he sniffed out the trail of his prey, the victim never escaped. So the assassin was unbothered by the empty house that he found in Bryn Shander, the principal city of the ten settlements in the wasteland of Icewind Dale. Entreri had suspected that the halfling had slipped out of Ten-Towns. But no matter; if this was indeed the same halfling that he had sought all the way from Calimport, a thousand miles and more to the south, he had made better progress than he ever could have hoped. His mark had no more than a two-tenday head start and the trail would be fresh indeed.
Entreri moved through the house silently and calmly, seeking hints of the halfling’s life here that would give him the edge in their inevitable confrontation. Clutter greeted him in every room—the halfling had left in a hurry, probably aware that the assassin was closing in. Entreri considered this a good sign, further heightening his suspicions that this halfling, Regis, was the same Regis who had served the Pasha Pook those years ago in the distant southern city.
The assassin smiled evilly at the thought that the halfling knew he was being stalked, adding to the challenge of the hunt as Entreri pitted his stalking prowess against his intended victim’s hiding ability. But the end result was predictable, Entreri knew, for a frightened person invariably made a fatal mistake.
The assassin found what he was looking for in a desk drawer in the master bedroom. Fleeing in haste, Regis had neglected to take precautions to conceal his true identity. Entreri held the small ring up before his gleaming eyes, studying the inscription that clearly identified Regis as a member of Pasha Pook’s thieves’ guild in Calimport. Entreri closed his fist about the signet, the evil smile widening across his face.
“I have found you, little thief,” he laughed into the emptiness of the room. “Your fate is sealed. There is nowhere for you to run!”
His expression changed abruptly to one of alertness as the sound of a key in the palatial house’s front door echoed up the hallway of the grand staircase. He dropped the ring into his bell pouch and slipped, as silent as death, to the shadows of the top posts of the stairway’s heavy banister.
The large double doors swung open, and a man and a young woman stepped in from the porch ahead of two dwarves. Entreri knew the man, Cassius, the spokesman of Bryn Shander. This had been his home once, but he had relinquished it several months earlier to Regis, after the halfling’s heroic actions in the town’s battle against the evil wizard, Akar Kessell, and his goblin minions.
Entreri had seen the other human before, as well, though he hadn’t yet discovered her connection to Regis. Beautiful women were a rarity in this remote setting, and this young woman was indeed the exception. Shiny auburn locks danced gaily about her shoulders, the intense sparkle of her dark blue eyes enough to bind any man hopelessly within their depths.
Her name, the assassin had learned, was Catti-brie. She lived with the dwarves in their valley north of the city, particularly with the leader of the dwarven clan, Bruenor, who had adopted her as his own a dozen years before when a goblin raid had left her orphaned.
This could prove a valuable meeting, Entreri mused. He cocked an ear through the banister poles to hear the discussion below.
“He’s been gone but a tenday!” Catti-brie argued.
“A tenday with no word,” snapped Cassius, obviously upset. “With my beautiful house empty and unguarded. Why, the front door was unlocked when I came by a few days ago!”
“Ye gave the house to Regis,” Catti-brie reminded the man.
“Loaned!” Cassius roared, though in truth the house had indeed been a gift. The spokesman had quickly regretted turning over to Regis the key to this palace, the grandest house north of Mirabar. In retrospect, Cassius understood that he had been caught up in the fervor of that tremendous victory over the goblins, and he suspected that Regis had lifted his emotions even a step further by using the reputed hypnotic powers of the ruby pendant.
Like others who had been duped by the persuasive halfling, Cassius had come to a very different perspective on the events that had transpired, a perspective that painted Regis unfavorably.
“No matter the name ye call it,” Catti-brie conceded, “ye should not be so hasty to decide that Regis has forsaken the house.”
The spokesman’s face reddened in fury. “Everything out today!” he demanded. “You have my list. I want all of the halfling’s belongings out of my house! Any that remain when I return tomorrow shall become my own by the rights of possession! And I warn you, I shall be compensated dearly if any of my property is missing or damaged!” He turned on his heel and stormed out the doors.
“He’s got his hair up about this one,” chuckled Fender Mallot, one of the dwarves. “Never have I seen one whose friends swing from loyalty to hatred more than Regis!”
Catti-brie nodded in agreement of Fender’s observation. She knew that Regis played with magical charms, and she figured that his paradoxical relationships with those around him were an unfortunate side effect of his dabblings.
“Do ye suppose he’s off with Drizzt and Bruenor?” Fender asked. Up the stairs, Entreri shifted anxiously.
“Not to doubt,” Catti-brie answered. “All winter they’ve been asking him to join in the quest for Mithral Hall, an’ to be sure, Wulfgar’s joining added to the pressure.”
“Then the little one’s halfway to Luskan, or more,” reasoned Fender. “And Cassius is right in wantin’ his house back.”
“Then let us get to packing,” said Catti-brie. “Cassius has enough o’ his own without adding to the hoard from Regis’s goods.”
Entreri leaned back against the banister. The name of Mithral Hall was unknown to him, but he knew the way to Luskan well enough. He grinned again, wondering if he might catch them before they ever reached the port city.
First, though, he knew that there still might be some valuable information to be garnered here. Catti-brie and the dwarves set about the task of collecting the halfling’s belongings, and as they moved from room to room, the black shadow of Artemis Entreri, as silent as death, hovered about them. They never suspected his presence, never would have guessed that the gentle ripple in the drapes was anything more than a draft flowing in from the edges of the window, or that the shadow behind a chair was disproportionately long.
He managed to stay close enough to hear nearly all of their conversation, and Catti-brie and the dwarves spoke of little else than the four adventurers and their journey to Mithral Hall. But Entreri learned little for his efforts. He already knew of the halfling’s famed companions—everyone in Ten-Towns spoke of them often: of Drizzt Do’Urden, the renegade drow elf, who had forsaken his dark-skinned people in the bowels of the Realms and roamed the borders of Ten-Towns as a solitary guardian against the intrusions of the wilderness of Icewind Dale; of Bruenor Battlehammer, the rowdy leader of the dwarven clan that lived in the valley near Kelvin’s Cairn; and most of all, of Wulfgar, the mighty barbarian, who was captured and raised to adulthood by Bruenor, returned with the savage tribes of the dale to defend Ten-Towns against the goblin army, then struck up a truce between all the peoples of Icewind Dale. A bargain that had salvaged, and promised to enrich, the lives of all involved.
“It seems that you have surrounded yourself with formidable allies, halfling,” Entreri mused, leaning against the back of a large chair, as Catti-brie and the dwarves moved into an adjoining room. “Little help they will offer. You are mine!”
Copyright © 2024 by R.A. Salvatore. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
