was a weapon, like her bow, and, though its brutal tactics assaulted her sensibilities, Catti-brie came, in that moment, to accept them. She carried the dagger more easily as the days turned into a week, and then two.
This was the Underdark, where the savage survived.
Part 3 SHADOWS here are no shadows in the Underdark.
Only after years on the surface have I come to under stand the sign ficance of that seemingly minute fact, the sig nificance of the contrast between lightness and darkness. There are no shadows in the Underdark, no areas of mystery where only the imagination can go.
What a marvelous thing is a shadow! I have seen my own silhouette walk under me as the sun rode high; I have seen a gopher grow to the size of a large bear, the light low behind him, spreading his ominous silhouette far across the ground. I have walked through the woods at twilight, my gaze alternating between the lighter areas catching the last rays of day, leafy green slipping to gray, and those darkening patches, those areas where only my mind's eye could go. Might a monster be there? An orc or a goblin? Or might a hidden treasure, as magn~ficent as a lost, enchanted sword or as simple as a fox's den, lay within the sheltering gloom?
When I walk the woods at twilight, my imagination walks beside me, heightens my senses, opens my mind to any possibilities. But there are no shadows in the Underdark, and there is no room forfanciful imagining. All, everywhere, is gripped in a brooding, continual, predatory hush and a very real, ever present danger.
To imagine a crouched enemy, or a hidden treasure, is an exercise in enjoyment, a conjured state of alertness, of aliveness. But when that enemy is too often real and not imagined, when every jag in the stone, every potential hiding place, becomes a source of tension, then the game is not so much fun.
One cannot walk the corridors of the Underdark with his imagination beside him. To imagine an enemy behind one stone might well blind a per son to the very real enemy behind another. To slip into a daydream is to lose that edge of readiness, and in the Underdark, to be unwary is to die.
This proved the most difficult transition for me when I went back into those lightless corridors. I had to again become the primal hunter, had to survive, every moment, on that instinctual edge, a state of nervous energy that kept my muscles always taut, always ready to spring. Every step of the way, the present was all that mattered, the search for potential hiding places of potential enemies. I could not afford to imagine those enemies. I had to wait for them and watch for them, react to any movements.
There are no shadows in the Underdark. There is no room for imagina tion in the Underdark. It is a place for alertness, but not aliveness, a place with no room for hopes and dreams.
Chapter 13 HUNGRY GODDESS
Councilor Firble of Blingdenstone normally enjoyed his journeys out of the deep gnome city, but not this day. The little gnome stood in a small chamber, but its dimensions seemed huge to him, for he felt quite vul nerable. He kicked his hard boots about the rocks on the otherwise smooth floor, twiddled his stubby fingers behind his back, and every so often ran a hand over his almost bald head, wiping away lines of sweat.
A dozen tunnels ran into this chamber, and Firble took some comfort in the knowledge that two score svirfnebli warriors stood ready to rush to his aid, including several shamans with enchanted stones that could summon elemental giants from the plane of earth. Firble understood the drow of Menzoberranzan, forty five miles to the east of Blingdenstone, better than any of his kin, though, and even his armed escort's presence did not allow him to relax. The gnome councilor knew well that if the dark elves had set this up as an ambush, then all the gnomes and all the magic of Blingdenstone might not be enough.
A familiar clicking sounded from the tunnel directly across the small chamber and, a moment later, in swept Jarlaxle, the extraordi nary drow mercenary, his wide brimmed hat festooned with a giant diatryma feather, his vest cut high to reveal rolling lines of muscles across his abdomen. He strode before the gnome, glanced about a couple