line of gray smoke began wafting out of his pocket.
"Oh, by the gods," the wizard moaned.
Drizzt and Catti-brie both jumped to their feet, more because of the wizard's surprisingly acute reasoning than because of the present smoky spectacle.
"What foe, Drizzt?" Harkle pressed with all urgency, the wizard suddenly suspecting that his time was short.
"He," Catti-brie echoed over and over, trying to jog her memory. "Jarlaxle?"
" 'Who is most unshriven,' " Harkle reminded her.
"Not the mercenary, then," said Drizzt, for he had come to the conclusion that Jarlaxle was not as evil as many. "Berg'inyon Baenre, perhaps. He has hated me since our days in the Academy."
"Think! Think! Think!" Harkle shouted as a great gout of smoke rose up from his pocket.
"What are you burning?" Catti-brie demanded, trying to pull the Harpell around so that she could better see. To her surprise and horror, her hand went right through the wizard's suddenly-less-than-corporeal form.
"Never mind that!" Harkle snapped at her. "Think, Drizzt
Do'Urden. What foe, who is most unshriven, who festers in the swirl of Abyss and hates you above all? What beast must be freed, that only you can free?" Harkle's voice seem to trail away as his form began to fade.
"I have exceeded the limits of my spell," the wizard tried to explain to his horrified companions. "And so I am out of it, I fear, sent away ..."
Harkle's voice came back strong, unexpectedly. "What beast, Drizzt? What foe?" And then he was gone, simply gone, leaving Drizzt and Catti-brie standing and staring blankly in the small room.
That last call, as Harkle faded from view, reminded Drizzt of another time when he had heard such a distant cry.
"Errtu," the drow whispered breathlessly. He shook his head even as he spoke the obvious answer, for, though Harkle's reasoning seemed sound, it didn't make sense to Drizzt, not in the context of the poem.
"Errtu," Catti-brie echoed. "Suren that one's hating ye above all, and Lloth'd likely know him, or know of him."
Drizzt shook his head. "It cannot be, for never did I meet the tanar'ri in Menzoberranzan, as the blind seer declared."
Catti-brie thought on that one for a moment. "She never said Menzoberranzan," the woman replied. "Not once."
"In the home that was . . ." Drizzt began to recite, but he nearly gagged on the words, on the sudden realization that his interpretation of their meaning might not be correct.
Catti-brie caught it, too. "Ye never called that place yer home," she said. "And ye often telled me that yer first home was ..."
"Icewind Dale," Drizzt said.
"And it was there that ye met Errtu, and made o' him an enemy," Catti-brie reasoned, and Harkle Harpell seemed a wise man indeed at that moment.
Drizzt winced, remembering well the power and wickedness of the evil balor. It pained the ranger to think of Zaknafein in Errtu's clutches.
* * * * *
Harkle Harpell lifted his head from his huge desk and stretched with a great yawn.
"Oh, yes," he said, recognizing the pile of parchments spread on the desk before him. "I was working on my spell."
Harkle sorted them out and studied them more closely.
"My new spell!" he cried in glee. "Oh, it is finally completed, the fog of fate! Oh, joy, oh happy day!" The wizard leaped up from his chair and twirled about the room, his voluminous robes flying wide. After so many months of exhausting research, his new spell was finally complete. The possibilities rolled through Harkle's mind. Perhaps the fog of fate would take him to Calimshan, on an adventure with a pasha, perhaps to Anauroch, the great desert, or perhaps even to the wastelands of Vaasa. Yes, Harkle would like to go to Vaasa and the rugged Galena Mountains.
"I will have to learn more of the Galenas and have them fully in mind when I cast the spell," he told himself. "Yes, yes, that's the trick." With a snap of his fingers, the wizard rushed to his desk, carefully sorted and arranged the many parchments of the long and complicated spell and placed them in a drawer. Then he rushed out, heading for the library of the Ivy Mansion, to gather information on Vaasa and neighboring Damara, the famed Bloodstone Lands. He could hardly keep his balance, so excited was he about what he believed to be the initial casting of his new spell, the culmination of months of labor.
For Harkle had no recollection of the true initial casting. All of the last few weeks had been erased from his mind as surely