The Ghost King (Transitions #3) 3

I AM NOT YOUR ENEMY

She wore a little knowing smile, a smile at odds with her eyes, which had rolled again to white. She was floating off the ground. "Ye mean to kill him?" she asked, as if she were talking to someone standing before her. As she spoke, her eyes came back into focus.

"The accent," Jarlaxle remarked as Catti-brie's shoulders shifted back - as if she thought she was leaning back in a chair, perhaps.

"If ye be killing Entreri to free Regis and to stop him from hurting anyone else, then me heart says it's a good thing," the woman said, and leaned forward intently. "But if ye're meaning to kill him to prove yerself or to deny what he is, then me heart cries."

"Calimport," Drizzt whispered, vividly recalling the scene. "Wha - ?" Bruenor started to ask, but Catti-brie continued, cutting him short.

"Suren the world's not fair, me friend. Suren by the measure of hearts, ye been wronged. But are ye after the assassin for yer own anger? Will killing Entreri cure the wrong?

"Look in the mirror, Drizzt Do'Urden, without the mask. Killin' Entreri won't change the color of his skin - or the color of yer own."

"Elf?" Bruenor asked, but at that shocking moment, Drizzt couldn't even hear him.

The weight of that long-ago encounter with Catti-brie came cascading back to him. He was there again, in the moment, in that small room, receiving one of the most profound slaps of cold wisdom anyone had ever cared enough about him to deliver. It was the moment he realized that he loved Catti-brie, though it would be years before he dared act on those feelings.

He glanced at Bruenor and Jarlaxle, a bit embarrassed, too much overwhelmed, and turned again to his beloved, who continued that old conversation - word for word.

"... if only ye'd learn to look," she said, her lips turned in that disarming, charming smile that she had so often flashed Drizzt's way, each time melting any resistance he might have to what she was saying.

"And if only ye'd ever learned to love. Suren ye've let things slip past, Drizzt Do'Urden."

She turned her head, as if some commotion had occurred nearby, and Drizzt remembered that Wulfgar had entered the room at that moment. Wulfgar was Catti-brie's lover at that time, though she'd just hinted that her heart was for Drizzt.

And it was, he knew, even then.

Drizzt began to shake as he remembered what was to come. Jarlaxle moved up behind him then, and reached around Drizzt's head. For an instant, Drizzt tensed, thinking the mercenary had a garrote. It was no garrote, however, but an eye patch, which Jarlaxle tied on securely before shoving Drizzt forward.

"Go to her!" he demanded.

Only a step away, Drizzt heard again the words that had, in retrospect, changed his life, the words that had freed him.

"Just for thoughts, me friend," Catti-brie said quietly, and Drizzt had to pause before continuing to her, had to let her finish. "Are ye more trapped by the way the world sees ye, or by the way ye see the world seein' ye?"

Tears streaming from his lavender eyes, Drizzt fell over her in a great hug, pulling down her outstretched arms. He didn't cross into that shadowed plane, protected as he was by Jarlaxle's eye patch. Drizzt pulled Catti-brie down to him and hugged her close, and kept on hugging her until she finally relaxed and slipped back to a sitting position.

At last, Drizzt looked at the others, at Jarlaxle in particular.

"I am not your enemy, Drizzt Do'Urden," he said.

"What'd'ye do?" Bruenor demanded.

"The eye patch protects the mind from intrusion, magical or psionic,"

Jarlaxle explained. "Not fully, but enough so that a wary Drizzt would not be drawn again into that place where ..."

"Where Regis's mind now dwells," said Drizzt.

"Be sure that I'm not knowin' a bit o' what ye're talking about," said Bruenor, planting his hands firmly on his hips. "What in the Nine Hells is going on, elf?"

Drizzt wore a confused expression and began to shake his head.

"It is as if two planes of existence, or two worlds from different planes, are crashing together," Jarlaxle said, and all of them looked at him as if he had grown an ettin's second head.

Jarlaxle took a deep breath and gave a little laugh. "It is no accident that I found you on the road," he said.

"Ye think we ever thinked it one, ye dolt?" asked Bruenor, drawing a helpless chuckle from the drow mercenary.

"And no accident that I sent Athrogate there - Stuttgard, if you will - into Mithral Hall to coax you on the road to Spirit Soaring."

"Yeah, the Crystal Shard," Bruenor muttered in a tone that showed obvious skepticism.

"All that I told you is true," Jarlaxle replied. "But yes, good dwarf, my tale was not complete."

"Me heart's skippin' to hear it."

"There is a dragon."

"There always is," said Bruenor.

"I and my friend here were being pursued," Jarlaxle explained. "Nasty buggers," said Athrogate.

"Pursued by creatures who could raise the dead with ease," said Jarlaxle. "The architects of the Crystal Shard, I believe, who have somehow transcended the limitations of this plane."

"Yup, ye're losing me in the trees again," said Bruenor.

"Creatures of two worlds, like Catti-brie," Drizzt said.

"Maybe. I cannot know for certain. That they are of, or possess the ability to be of two dimensions, I am certain. From this hat, I can produce dimensional holes, and so I did, and threw one such item at the creature pursuing me."

"The one what kept melting before me morningstars could flatten it out," Athrogate explained.

"Plane shifting," Jarlaxle said. "And it did so as my dimensional hole fell over it, and the combination of two extra-dimensional magics tore a rift to the Astral Plane."

"Then the creature's gone," said Bruenor.

"Forever, I expect," Jarlaxle agreed.

"And ye're needin' us and needin' Cadderly why, then?"

"Because it was an emissary, not the source. And the source ..."

"The dragon," said Drizzt.

"Always is," Bruenor said again.

Jarlaxle shrugged, unwilling to commit to that. "Whatever it is, it remains alive, and with the terrible power to send its thoughts across the world, and send its emissaries out as well. It's been calling forth minions from the realm of the dead with abandon, and perhaps" - he paused and looked back to the scene of the slaughtered beasts around them - "the power to call forth minions from this other place, this dark place."

"What're ye about, ye durned elf?" Bruenor demanded. "What did ye pull us along to?"

"Along the road that will find an answer for your dear daughter's plight, I hope," Jarlaxle replied without hesitation. "And yes, I put you beside Athrogate and I in our own quest, as well."

"Ye dropped us in the middle of it, ye mean!" Bruenor growled.

"I'm wantin' to punch yer skinny face!" Pwent shouted.

"We were already in the middle of it," Drizzt said, and when all turned to regard him as he knelt there hugging Catti-brie, it was hard for any to disagree. Drizzt looked at Jarlaxle and said, "The whole world is in the middle of it."