easily controlled, but Rai'gy couldn't know for certain until the creature appeared before him.
A bit of treachery from Gromph could have had him opening a gate to a major demon, to Demogorgon himself, and the impromptu magical circle Rai'gy had drawn here in the sewers of Calimport would hardly prove sufficient protection.
The wizard-priest relaxed a bit as the creature took shape-the shape, as Gromph had promised, of an imp. Even without the magical circle, a wizard-priest as powerful as Rai'gy would have little trouble in handling a mere imp.
"Who is it that calls my name?" asked the imp in the guttural language of the Abyss, obviously more than a little perturbed and, both Rai'gy and Jarlaxle noted, a bit trepidatious-and even more so when he noted that his summoners were drow elves. "You should not bother Druzil. No, no, for he serves a great master," Druzil went on, speaking fluently in the drow tongue.
"Silence!" Rai'gy commanded, and the little imp was compelled to obey. The wizard-priest looked to Jarlaxle.
"Why do you protest?" Jarlaxle asked Druzil. "Is it not the desire of your kind to find access to this world?"
Druzil tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, a pensive yet still apprehensive pose.
"Ah, yes," the mercenary leader went on. "But of late, you have been summoned not by friends, but by enemies, so I have been told. By Cadderly of Caradoon."
Druzil bared his pointy teeth and hissed at the mention of the priest. That brought a smile to the faces of both dark elves. Gromph Baenre, it seemed, had not steered them wrong.
"We would like to pain Cadderly," Jarlaxle explained with a wicked grin. "Would Druzil like to help?"
"Tell me how," the imp eagerly replied.
"We need to know everything about the human," Jarlaxle explained. "His appearance and demeanor, his history and present place. We were told that Druzil, above all others in the Abyss, knows the man."
"Hates the man," the imp corrected, and he seemed eager indeed. But suddenly he backed off, staring suspiciously at the two. "I tell you, and then you dismiss me," he remarked.
Jarlaxle looked to Rai'gy, for they had anticipated such a reaction. The wizard-priest stood up, walked to the side in the tiny room, and pulled aside a screen, revealing a small kettle, bubbling and boiling.
"I am without a familiar," Rai'gy explained. "An imp would serve me well."
Druzil's coal black eyes flared with red fires. "Then we can pain Cadderly and so many other humans together," the imp reasoned.
"Does Druzil agree?" Jarlaxle asked.
"Does Druzil have a choice?" the imp retorted sarcastically.
"As to serving Rai'gy, yes," the drow replied, and the imp was obviously surprised, as was Rai'gy. "As to revealing all that you know about Cadderly, no. It is too important, and if we must torment you for a hundred years, we shall."
"Then Cadderly would be dead," Druzil said dryly.
"The torment would remain pleasurable to me," Jarlaxle was quick to respond, and Druzil knew enough about dark elves to understand that this was no idle threat.
"Druzil wishes to pain Cadderly," the imp admitted, dark eyes sparkling.
"Then tell us," Jarlaxle said. "Everything."
Later on that day, while Druzil and Rai'gy worked the magic spells that would bind them as master and familiar, Jarlaxle sat alone in the room he had taken in the subbasement of House Basadoni. He had indeed learned much from the imp, most important of all that he had no desire to bring his band anywhere near the one named Cadderly Bonaduce. This was to Druzil's ultimate dismay. The leader of the Spirit Soaring, armed with magic far beyond even Rai'gy and Kimmuriel, might prove too great a foe. Even worse, Cadderly was apparently rebuilding an order of priests, surrounding himself with young and strong acolytes, enthusiastic idealists.
"The worst kind," Jarlaxle said as Entreri entered the room. "Idealists," he explained to the assassin's perplexed expression. "Above all else, I hate idealists."
"They are blind fools," Entreri agreed.
"They are unpredictable fanatics," Jarlaxle explained. "Blind to danger and blind to fear as long as they think their path is according to the tenets of their particular god-figure."
"And the leader of this other guild is an idealist?" a confused Entreri asked, for he thought he had been summoned to discuss his upcoming meeting with the remaining guilds of Calimport, to stop a war before it ever began.
"No, no, it is another matter," Jarlaxle explained, waving his hand dismissively. "One that concerns my activities in Menzoberranzan and not here in Calimport. Let it not trouble you, for you have business