from his past were a false hope, knew that his memories would follow him wherever he went, whatever he did. He felt no satisfaction at exacting revenge against Valric and no joy in slaughtering the orcs.
Nothing.
He walked on through the night, not even bothering to wash the blood from his clothes or to dress his many minor wounds. He walked toward the sunset, then kept the rising moon at his back, chasing its descent to the western horizon.
Three days later, he found Luskan's eastern gate.
Chapter 11 THE BATTLE-MAGE
Do not come here," LaValle cried, and then he added softly, "I beg."
Entreri merely continued to stare at the man, his expression unreadable.
"You wounded Kadran Gordeon," LaValle went on. "In pride more than in body, and that, I warn you, is more dangerous by far."
"Gordeon is a fool," Entreri retorted.
"A fool with an army," LaValle quipped. "No guild is more entrenched in the streets than the Basadonis. None have more resources, and all of those resources, I assure you, have been turned upon Artemis Entreri."
"And upon LaValle, perhaps?" Entreri replied with a grin. "For speaking with the hunted man?"
LaValle didn't answer the obvious question other than to continue to stare hard at Artemis Entreri, the man whose mere presence in his room this night might have just condemned him.
"Tell them everything they ask of you," Entreri instructed. "Honestly. Do not try to deceive them for my sake. Tell them that I came here, uninvited, to speak with you and that I show no wounds for all their efforts."
"You would taunt them so?"
Entreri shrugged. "Does it matter?"
LaValle had no answer to that, and so the assassin, with a bow, moved to the window and, defeating one trap with a flick of the wrist and carefully manipulating his body to avoid the others, slipped out to the wall and dropped silently to the street.
He dared to go by the Copper Ante that night, though only quickly and with no effort to actually enter the place. Still, he did make himself known to the door halflings. To his surprise, a short way down the alley at the side of the building, Dwahvel Tiggerwillies came out a secret door to speak with him.
"A battle-mage," she warned. "Merle Pariso. With a reputation unparalleled in Calimport. Fear him, Artemis Entreri. Run from him. Flee the city and all of Calimshan." And with that, she slipped through another barely detectable crack in the wall and was gone.
The gravity of her words and tone were not lost on the assassin. The mere fact that Dwahvel had come out to him, with nothing to gain and everything to lose-how could he repay the favor, after all, if he took her advice and fled the realm?-tipped him off that she had been instructed to so inform him, or at least, that this battle-mage was making no secret of the hunt.
So perhaps the wizard was a bit too cocksure, he told himself, but that, too, proved of little comfort. A battle-mage! A wizard trained specifically in the art of magical warfare. Cocksure, and with a right to be. Entreri had battled, and killed, many wizards, but he understood the desperate truth of his present situation. A wizard was not so difficult an enemy for a seasoned warrior, as long as the warrior was able to prepare the battlefield favorably. That, too, was usually not difficult, since wizards were often, by nature, distracted and unprepared. Typically a wizard had to anticipate battle far in advance, at the beginning of the day, that he might prepare the appropriate spells. Wizards, distracted by their continual research, rarely prepared such spells. But when a wizard was the hunter and not the hunted he would not be caught off his guard. Entreri knew he was in trouble. He seriously considered taking Dwahvel's advice.
For the first time since he had returned to Calimport, the assassin truly appreciated the danger of being without allies. He considered that in light of his experiences in Menzoberranzan, where unallied rogues could not survive for long.
Perhaps Calimport wasn't so different.
He started for his new room, an empty hovel at the back of an alleyway, but stopped and reconsidered. It wasn't likely that the wizard, with such a reputation as a combat spellcaster, would be overly skilled in divination spells as well. That hardly mattered, Entreri knew. It all came down to connections, and Merle Pariso was acting on behalf of the Basadoni guild. If he wanted to magically locate Entreri, the guild would grant him