up beside him, scimitars in hand.
“An elf took me maps!” Bruenor cried at him. “Drow elf!”
“Where did he run?”
The dwarf glanced all around, but threw his axe down, sticking it into the ground, and helplessly lifted his empty, trembling hands.
“Which way?” Drizzt prompted.
Bruenor waved his hands and head in despair.
“Where were you when he struck?” Drizzt asked, and for a moment, the flustered dwarf even seemed to be confused about that.
Finally, Bruenor collected himself enough to lead Drizzt back to the mossy patch. The darkness enchantment was gone by then, revealing the pile of stones, a few of them scattered about on the moss. But no maps were to be seen, nor the pack Bruenor had used to carry them.
“He put a damned darkness globe over me,” Bruenor grumbled, stamping his foot in outrage. “Blinded me and hit me with …”
Drizzt leaned in, prompting the dwarf to explain in detail, but all Bruenor could offer was, “Bees.”
“Bees?”
“Felt like bees,” Bruenor tried to explain. “Bitin’ at me, stingin’ me. Something …” He shook his hairy head and held forth one arm, and indeed, between his heavy bracer and short sleeve, his bare skin showed many small welts. “Kept me back while he swooped through, taking me maps.”
“You’re sure it was a drow?”
“I seen him when I came out o’ the darkness,” Bruenor asserted.
“Where?”
Bruenor led him to the spot and pointed to the ridge leading back to the dell, and Drizzt dropped to his knees, examining the shrubs and the dirt. An expert tracker, Drizzt easily found the trail—surprisingly easily, given Bruenor’s description of the robber as a dark elf. He followed that trail into the dell, and there it got far more confusing, for any tracks or bent fronds had been muddled by the tumultuous traffic the low ground had seen, a dwarf running back and forth.
Finally, though, Drizzt did rediscover the trail, and found it to lead out to the northwest. He and Bruenor ascended the ridge there, peering out.
“The road is that way,” Drizzt remarked.
“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