"Those are grand claims," Olwen growled.

"And you were there?" Entreri shot right back.

"What of Mariabronne, then?" Olwen demanded. "Was he, too, in league with our enemies? Is that what you're claiming?"

"I claimed nothing in regards to him. He fell to creatures of shadow when he moved ahead of the rest of us."

"Yet we found him in the dracolich's chamber," said Riordan.

"We needed all the help we could garner."

"Are you claiming that he was resurrected, only to die again?" Riordan asked.

"Or animated," Friar Dugald added. "And you know of course that to animate the corpse of a goodly man is a crime against all that is good and right. A crime against the Broken God!"

Entreri stared at Dugald, narrowed his eyes, grinned, and spat on the floor. "Not my god," he explained.

Celedon rushed over and slugged him. He staggered, just a step, but refused to fall over.

"Gareth is king by blood and by deed!" Dugald shouted. "Anointed by Ilmater himself."

"As every drow matron claims to be blessed by Lolth!" the stubborn prisoner cried.

"Lord Ilmater strike you dead!" Lady Christine shouted.

"Fetch your sword and strike for him," Entreri shouted right back. "Or get your sword and give me my own, and we will learn whose god is the stronger!"

Celedon moved as if to hit him again, but the man stopped fast, for Entreri finished his insult in a gurgle, as vibrations of wracking pain ran the course of his body, sending his muscles into cramps and convulsions.

"Master Kane!" King Gareth scolded.

"He will not speak such to the queen, on pain of death," Kane replied.

"Release him from your grasp," Gareth ordered.

Kane nodded and closed his eyes.

Entreri straightened and sucked in a deep breath. He stumbled and went down to one knee.

"Do give him a sword, then," Christine called out.

"Sit down and be still!" Gareth ordered. He from his chair and walked forward, right toward the stunned expressions of most everyone in the room— except for Entreri, who glanced up at him with that hateful intensity.

"Remove him to a cell on the first dungeon level," Gareth ordered. "Keep it lit and warm, and his food will be ample and sweet."

"But my king…" Olwen started to protest.

"And harm him not at all," Gareth went on without hesitation. "Now. Be gone."

Riordan and Celedon moved to flank Entreri, and began pulling him from the chamber. Olwen cast one surprised, angry look at Gareth, and rushed to follow.

"Go and ease his pain," Gareth said to Friar Dugald, who stood staring at him incredulously. When the friar didn't immediately move, he said, "Go! Go!" and waved his hand.

Dugald stared at Gareth over his shoulder for many steps as he exited the room.

"You suffer him at your peril," Christine scolded her husband.

"I had warned you not to engage him so."

"You would accept his insults?"

"I would hear him out."

"You are the king, Gareth Dragonsbane, king of Damara and king of Vaasa. Your patience is a virtue, I do not doubt, but it is misplaced here."

Gareth was too wise a husband to point out the irony of that statement. He didn't blink, though, and didn't nod his agreement in any way, and so with a huff, Lady Christine headed out the side door through which she and Gareth had entered.

"You cannot suffer him to live," Kane said to the king when they were alone. "To do so would invite challenges throughout your realm. Dimian Ree watches us carefully at this time, I am certain."

"Was he so wrong?" Gareth asked.

"Yes," the monk answered without the slightest pause.

But Gareth shook his head. Had Entreri and that strange drow creature done anything different than he? Truly?

You would think them wiser, Kimmuriel Oblodra signaled in the silent drow hand code, and the way he waggled his thumb at the end showed his great contempt for the humans.

They do not understand the world below, Jarlaxle's dexterous hands replied. The Underdark is a distant thought to the surface dwellers. As he signed the words, Jarlaxle considered them—the truth of them and the implications. He also wondered why he so often rushed to the defense of the surface dwellers. Knellict was an archmage, brilliant by the standards of any of the common races of Toril, a master of intricate and complicated arts. Yet he had chosen his hideout, no doubt looking east, west, north, and south, but never bothering to look down.

A mere forty feet below the most secretive and protected regions of the citadel's mountain retreat, ran a tunnel wide and deep, a conduit along the upper reaches of the vast network of tunnels and caverns known as the Underdark, a route for caravans.

An approach for enemies.

Do not forget our bargain, Kimmuriel signed to him.

The last time, Jarlaxle promised, and he tapped his belt pouch, which contained the magical item to which Kimmuriel had just referred.

Kimmuriel's return look showed that he didn't believe Jarlaxle for a minute, but then again, neither did Jarlaxle. The demand was akin to telling a shadow mastiff not to bark, or a matron mother not to torture. Controlling one's nature could only be taken so far.

Kimmuriel's expression reflected little beyond that initial doubt, of course, but in it, if there was anything, it was only resignation, even amusement. The psionicist turned to the line of wizards assembled at his side and nodded. The first rushed to Kimmuriel and pointed straight up. He quickly traced an outline, and as soon as Kimmuriel agreed, the wizard launched into spellcasting.

A few moments later, the drow completed his spell with a great flourish, and a square block of the stone ceiling twice a drow's height simply dematerialized, vanished to nothingness.

Without hesitation, for the spell had a finite duration, the second wizard rushed up beside the first, touched his insignia, levitated up into the magical chimney, and similarly cast. Before he had even finished, the third had begun levitating.

Twenty or more feet up from the corridor, the third wizard executed the same powerful spell.

With the next we will be into the complex, Kimmuriel's hands told the Bregan D'aerthe soldiers gathered nearby. Fast and silent!

The fourth wizard ascended, and with him went the first contingent, Bregan D'aerthe's finest forward assassins led by an experienced scout named Valas Hune. They were the infiltrators, the trailblazers, and they most often marked their paths with the blood of sentries.

They timed their rise perfectly, of course, and floated past the fourth wizard just as the stone dematerialized, so that without breaking their momentum in the least, the group floated through the last ten feet and into the lower complex of the Citadel of Assassins.

The first three wizards went up right behind them, and as soon as the scouts had gathered the lay of the region and had slipped off into the torchlit tunnels, the wizards cast again.

All through the lower reaches of Knellict's mountain hideaway, a mysterious fog began to rise. More a misty veil than an opaque wall, the wafting fog elicited curiosity, no doubt.

It also rendered the quiet footsteps of drow warriors completely silent.

It also dampened most evocative magic.

It also countered all of the most common magical wards.

More warriors floated through the breach and moved along with practiced skill. Jarlaxle tipped his great hat to enable its magical powers, and he and Kimmuriel came through, accompanied by an elite group of fighters. They swept up two of the wizards in their wake, the other two moving to their predetermined positions.

This was not strange ground to the dark elves. Kimmuriel's spying of the hideaway had been near complete, and at Jarlaxle's insistence, the maps he had drawn had been studied and fully memorized by every raider rising through the floor. Even the two guard contingents left in the Underdark corridor below knew the layout fully.