which skipped off the stone just behind the running woman and stole her train of thought. Catti-brie skidded down in the mud and scooped up her bow as she slid past. She looked down to her quiver, saw its powerful magic already at work replacing the spent arrows.
She saw, too, that no more blood was coming from her wound. Gingerly, the young woman ran a hand over it, felt a thick scab already in place. She shook her head in disbelief, took up her bow, and began firing.
Only one more goblin got close to Catti-brie. It sneaked around the back side of the thick mound. The young woman started to drop her bow and draw out her weapons for melee, but she stopped (and so did the goblin!) when a great panther's paw slapped down atop the creature's head and long claws dug into the goblin's sloping forehead.
Guenhwyvar snapped the creature backward with sudden, sav age force such that one of the monster's shoddy boots remained where it had been standing. Catti-brie looked away, back to the area behind them, as Guenhwyvar's powerful maw closed over the stunned goblin's throat and began to squeeze.
Catti-brie saw no targets, but let fly another arrow to brighten the end of the corridor. Half a dozen goblins were in full flight, and Catti-brie sent a shower of arrows trailing them, chasing them, and cutting them down.
She was still firing a minute later, her enchanted quiver would never run short of arrows, when Guenhwyvar padded over to her and bumped against her, demanding a pat. Catti-brie sighed deeply and dropped a hand to the cat's muscled flank, her eyes falling to the jeweled dagger, sitting impassively on her belt.
She had seen Entreri wield that dagger, had once had its blade against her own throat. The young woman shuddered as she recalled that awful moment, more awful now that she understood the cruel weapon's properties.
Guenhwyvar growled and pushed against her, prodding her to motion. Catti-brie understood the panther's urgency; according to Drizzt's tales, goblins rarely traveled in the Underdark in secluded bands. If there were twenty here, there were likely two hundred somewhere nearby.
Catti-brie looked to the tunnel behind them, the tunnel from which she had come and down which the goblins had fled. She con sidered, briefly, going that way, fighting through the fleeing few and running back to the surface world, where she belonged.
It was a fleeting thought for her, an excusable instant of weak ness. She knew that she must go on, but how? Catti-brie looked down to her belt once more and smiled as she untied the magical mask. She lifted it before her face, unsure of how it even worked.
With a shrug to Guenhwyvar, the young woman pressed the mask against her face.
Nothing happened.
Holding it tight, she thought of Drizzt, imagined herself with ebony skin and the fine chiseled features of a drow.
Biting tingles of magic nipped at her every pore. In a moment, she moved her hand away from her face, the mask holding fast of its own accord. Catti-brie blinked many times, for in the magical starlight afforded her by the Cat's Eye, she saw her receding hand shining perfectly black, her fingers more slender and delicate than she remembered them.
How easy it had been!
Catti-brie wished that she had a mirror so that she could check the disguise, though she felt in her heart that it was true. She consid ered how perfectly Entreri had mimicked Regis when he had come back to Mithril Hall, right down to the halfling's equipment. With that thought, the young woman looked to her own rather drab garb. She considered Drizzt's tales of his homeland, of the fabulous and evil high priestesses of Lloth.
Catti-brie's worn traveling cloak had become a rich robe, shim mering purple and black. Her boots had blackened, their tips curl ing up delicately. Her weapons remained the same, though, and it seemed to Catti-brie, in this attire, that Entreri's jeweled dagger was the most fitting.
Again the young woman focused her thoughts on that wicked blade. A part of her wanted to drop it in the mud, to bury it where no one could ever find it. She even went so far as to close her fingers over its hilt.
But she released the dagger immediately, strengthened her resolve, and smoothed her drowlike robes. The blade had helped her; without it she would be crippled and lost, if not dead. It