Jarlaxle’s eyes narrowed as he followed the elderboy’s reasoning. “Matron Malice sent you to me?” he stated as much as asked.

Dinin shook his head and Jarlaxle did not doubt his sincerity. “You are as wise as you are skilled in the blade,” the mercenary offered graciously, slipping into a second bow, one that seemed somehow ambiguous out here in Jarlaxle’s dark world.

“I have come of my own initiative,” Dinin said firmly. “I must find some answers.”

“Are you afraid, Elderboy?”

“Concerned,” Dinin replied sincerely, ignoring the mercenary’s taunting tone. “I never make the error of underestimating my enemies, or my allies.”

Jarlaxle cast him a confused glance.

“I know what my brother has become,” Dinin explained. “And I know who Zaknafein once was.”

“Zaknafein is a spirit-wraith now,” Jarlaxle replied, “under the control of Matron Malice.”

“Many days,” Dinin said quietly, believing the implications of his words spoke loudly enough.

“Your mother asked for Zin-carla,” Jarlaxle retorted, a bit sharply. “It is Lloth’s greatest gift, given only so that the Spider Queen is pleased in return. Matron Malice knew the risk when she requested Zin-carla. Surely you understand, Elderboy, that spirit-wraiths are given for the completion of a specific task.”

“And what are the consequences of failure?” Dinin asked bluntly, matching Jarlaxle’s perturbed attitude.

The mercenary’s incredulous stare was all the answer Dinin needed. “How long does Zaknafein have?” Dinin asked.

Jarlaxle shrugged noncommittally and answered with a question of his own. “Who can guess at Lloth’s plans?” he asked. “The Spider Queen can be a patient one―if the gain is great enough to justify the wait. Is Drizzt’s value such?” Again the mercenary shrugged. “That is for Lloth, and for Lloth alone, to decide.”

Dinin studied Jarlaxle for a long moment, until he was certain that the mercenary had nothing left to offer him. Then he turned back to his lizard mount and pulled the cowl of his piwafwi low. When he regained his saddle, Dinin spun about, thinking to issue one final comment, but the mercenary and his guards were nowhere to be found.

“Bivrip!” Belwar cried, completing the spell. The burrow-warden banged his hands together again, and this time did not wince, for the pain was not so intense. Sparks flew when the mithril hands crashed together, and Belwar’s master clapped its four-fingered hands in absolute glee. The illithid simply had to see its gladiator in action now. It looked about for a target and spotted the partially cut cubby. A whole set of telepathic instructions roared into the burrow-warden’s mind as the illithid imparted mental images of the design and depth it wanted for the cubby.

Belwar moved right in. Unsure of the strength in his wounded shoulder, the one guiding the hammer-hand, he led with the pickaxe. The stone exploded into dust under the enchanted hand’s blow, and the illithid sent a clear message of its pleasure flooding into Belwar’s thoughts. Even the armor of a hook horror would not stand against such a blow!

Belwar’s master reinforced the instructions it had given to the deep gnome, then moved into an adjoining chamber to study. Left alone to his work, so very similar to the tasks he had worked at for all of his century of life, Belwar found himself wondering.

Nothing in particular crossed the burrow-warden’s few coherent thoughts; the need to please his illithid master remained the foremost guidance of his movements. For the first time since his capture, though, Belwar wondered.

Identity? Purpose?

The enchanting spell-song of his mithril hands ran through his mind again, became a focus of his unconscious determination to sort through the blur of his captors’ insinuations.

“Bivrip?” he muttered again, and the word triggered a more recent memory, an image of a drow elf, kneeling and massaging the god-thing of the illithid community.

“Drizzt?” Belwar muttered under his breath, but the name was forgotten in the next bang of his pick-hand, obliterated by the svirfneblin’s continuing desire to please his illithid master.

The cubby had to be perfect.

A lump of flesh rippled under an ebony-skinned hand and a wave of anxiety flooded through Drizzt, imparted by the central brain of the mind flayer community. The drow’s only emotional response was sadness, for he could not bear to see the brain in distress. Slender fingers kneaded and rubbed; Drizzt lifted a bowl of warm water and poured it slowly over the flesh. Then Drizzt was happy, for the flesh smoothed out under his skilled touch, and the brain’s anxious emotions soon were replaced by a teasing hint of gratitude.

Behind the kneeling drow, across the wide walkway, two illithids watched it all and nodded approvingly. Drow elves always had proved skilled at this task, and this latest captive was one of the finest so far.

The illithids wiggled their fingers eagerly at the implications of that shared thought. The central brain had detected another drow intruder in the illithid webs that were the tunnels beyond the long and narrow cavern―another slave to massage and sooth.

So the central brain believed.

Four illithids moved out from the cavern, guided by the images imparted by the central brain. A single drow had entered their domain, an easy capture for four illithids.

So the mind flayers believed.

The spirit-wraith picked his silent way through the broken and twisting corridors, traveling with the light and practiced steps of a veteran drow warrior. But the mind flayers, guided by their central brain, anticipated Zaknafein’s course perfectly and were waiting for him.

As Zaknafein came beside the same stone ridge where Belwar and Clacker had fallen, an illithid jumped out at him and―fwoop!―blasted its stunning energy.

At that close range, few creatures could have resisted such a powerful blow, but Zaknafein was an undead thing, a being not of this world. The proximity of Zaknafein’s mind, linked to another plane of existence, could not be measured in steps. Impervious to such mental attacks, the spirit-wraith’s swords dived straight in, each taking the startled illithid in one of its milky, pupil-less eyes.

The three other mind flayers floated down from the ceiling, loosing their stunning blasts as they came. Swords in hand, Zaknafein waited confidently for them, but the mind flayers continued their descent. Never before had their mental attacks failed them; they could not believe that the incapacitating cones of energy would prove futile now. Fwoop! A dozen times the illithids fired, but the spirit-wraith seemed not to notice. The illithids, beginning to worry, tried to reach inside Zaknafein’s thoughts to understand how he had possibly avoided the effects. What they found was a barrier beyond their penetrating capabilities, a barrier that transcended their present plane of existence.

They had witnessed Zaknafein’s swordplay against their unfortunate companion and had no intention of engaging this skilled drow in melee combat. Telepathically, they promptly agreed to reverse their direction.

But they had descended too far.

Zaknafein cared nothing for the illithids and would have walked contentedly off on his way. The illithid’s misfortune, though, the spirit-wraith’s instincts, and Zaknafein’s past-life knowledge of mind flayers, led him to a simple conclusion: If Drizzt had traveled this way―and Zaknafein knew that he had―he most likely had encountered the mind flayers. An undead being could defeat them, but a mortal drow, even Drizzt, would find himself at a sorry disadvantage.

Zaknafein sheathed one sword and sprang up to the ridge of stone. In the blur of a second fast leap, the spirit-wraith caught one of the rising illithids by the ankle.