baby?" both Drizzt and Catti-brie said together. They looked at each other incredulously. When they turned back to Arumn, he merely shrugged, having nothing to offer.
"That was months ago," Josi Puddles interjected. "Ain't heared a thing o' them since."
Drizzt paused, digesting it all. Apparently, Wulfgar would have quite a tale to tell when at last they found him - if he was still alive. "Actually, we came in here seeking one we were told might have information about Wulfgar," the drow explained. "A man named Morik."
There came a scuffle of scrambling feet from behind, and the pair turned to see a small, dark-cloaked figure moving swiftly out of the tavern.
"That'd be yer Morik," Arumn explained.
Drizzt and Catti-brie rushed outside, glancing up and down the nearly deserted Half-Moon Street, but Morik, obviously a master of shadows, was nowhere to be seen.
Drizzt bent down near the soft dirt just beyond the Cutlass's wooden porch, noting a boot print. He smiled at Catti-brie and pointed to the left, an easy trail for the skilled ranger to follow.
* * * * * * * * * * *
"Ye're a pretty laddie, ain't ye?" the grimy old lech said. He pushed Le'lorinel up against the wall, putting his smelly face right up against the elf's.
Le'lorinel looked past him, to the other four old drunkards, all of them howling with laughter as the old fool started fiddling with the rope he used as a belt.
He stopped abruptly and slowly sank to the floor before the elf, moving his suddenly trembling hands lower, to where the knee had just connected.
Le'lorinel came out from the wall, drawing a sword, putting the flat of it against the old wretch's head, and none too gently pushing him over to the floor.
"I came in asking a simple question," the elf explained to the others, who were not laughing any longer.
The old wretches, former sailors, former pirates, glanced nervously from one to the other.
"Ye be a good laddie," one bald-headed man said, climbing to stand on severely bowed legs. "Tookie, there, he was just funning with ye."
"A simple question," Le'lorinel said again.
The elf had come into this dirty tavern along Luskan's docks showing the illusionary images E'kressa had prepared, asking about the significance of the mark.
"Not so simple, mayhaps," the bald-headed sea dog replied. "Ye're askin' about a mark, and many're wearin' marks."
"And most who are wearin' marks ain't looking to show 'em," another of the old men said.
Le'lorinel heard a movement to the side and saw the man, Tookie, rising fast from the floor and coming in hard. A sweep and turn, swinging the sword down to the side, not to slash the man - though Le'lorinel thought he surely deserved it - but to force him into an awkward, off-balance dodge, followed by a simple duck and step maneuver had the elf behind the attacker. A firm shove against Tookie's back had him diving forward to skid down hard to the floor.
But two of the others were there, one brandishing a curved knife used for scaling fish, another a short gaff hook.
Le'lorinel's right hand presented the sword defensively, while the elf s left hand went to the right hip, then snapped out.
The man with the gaff hook fell back, wailing and wheezing, a dagger deep in his chest.
Le'lorinel lunged forward, and the other attacker leaped back, presented his hands up before him in surrender, and let the curved knife fall to the floor.
"A simple question," the elf reiterated through gritted teeth, and the look in Le'lorinel's blue and gold eyes left no doubt among any in the room that this warrior would leave them all dead with hardly a thought.
"I ain't never seen it," the man who'd been holding the knife replied.
"But you are going to go and find out about it for me, correct?" Le'lorinel remarked. "All of you."
"Oh, yes, laddie, we'll get ye yer answers," another said.
The one still lying on the floor and facing away from Le'lorinel scrambled up suddenly and bolted for the door, bursting through and out into the twilight. Another rose to follow, but Le'lorinel stepped to the side, tore the dagger free from the dying man's chest and cocked it back, ready to throw.
"A simple question," Le'lorinel said yet again. "Find me my answer and I will reward you. Fail me and. . . ." The elf finished by turning to look at the man propped against the wall, laboring for breath now, obviously suffering in the last moments of his life.
Le'lorinel walked