“Of which god’s particular flavor do you taste, Drizzt Do’Urden?” he whispered. All signs—Drizzt’s affinity to nature, his status as a ranger, the unicorn he rode—pointed to Mielikki, a goddess of nature, but Draygo Quick had heard many other whispers that suggested Drizzt as a favored child of a very different and much darker goddess.
Either way, the withered old warlock held little doubt that this rogue drow was favored by some god. At this point in his investigation, it hardly mattered which.
He replaced “Cherlrigo’s Darkness” face down when he heard the knock on the door, and slowly rose and turned as he bade the Shifter and her companion to enter.
“Welcome, Erlindir of Mielikki,” he said graciously, and he wondered what he might learn of that goddess, and perhaps her “flavors” in addition to the tasks the Shifter had already convinced him to perform for Draygo.
“Is this your first visit to the Shadowfell?” Draygo Quick asked.
The druid nodded. “My first crossing to the land of colorless flowers,” he replied.
Draygo Quick glanced at the Shifter, who nodded confidently to indicate to him that Erlindir was fully under her spell.
“You understand the task?” Draygo Quick asked the druid. “That we might further investigate this abomination?”
“It seems easy enough,” Erlindir replied.
Draygo Quick nodded and waved his hand out toward a side door, bidding Erlindir to lead the way. As the druid moved ahead of him, the old warlock fell in step beside the Shifter. He let Erlindir go into the side chamber before them, and even bade the druid to give him a moment, then shut the door between them.
“He does not know of Drizzt?” he asked.
“He is from a faraway land,” the Shifter whispered back.
“He will make no connection with the panther and the drow, then? The tales of this one are considerable, and far-reaching.”
“He does not know of Drizzt Do’Urden. I have asked him directly.”
Draygo Quick glanced at the door. He was glad and a bit disappointed. Certainly if Erlindir knew of Drizzt and Guenhwyvar, this task could be troublesome. He could recognize the panther and such a shock might well defeat the Shifter’s dweomer of enchantment. But the gain could well outweigh the loss of his services, because Erlindir might then have offered, under great duress of course, the information regarding Drizzt’s standing with the goddess Mielikki.
“He could not have deceived me in his response,” the Shifter added. “For even then, I was in his thoughts, and a lie would have been revealed.”
“Ah, well,” Draygo Quick sighed.
The Shifter, who had no idea of the larger discussion taking place between Draygo Quick, Parise Ulfbinder, and several other Netherese Lords looked at him with some measure of surprise.
The old warlock met that look with an unremarkable and disarming smile. He opened the door and he and the Shifter joined Erlindir in the side chamber, where, under a silken cloth not unlike that covering his crystal ball, paced Guenhwyvar, trapped in a miniaturized magical cage.
Outside of Draygo Quick’s residence, Effron Alegni watched and waited. He had seen the Shifter go in—her appearance, at least, for one never knew when one might actually be looking at the tireless illusionist. He didn’t know her human companion, but the old man certainly was no shade, didn’t look Netherese, and didn’t look at all at home in the Shadowfell.
This was about the panther, Effron knew.
The thought gnawed at him. Draygo Quick had not given the panther back to him, but that cat was perhaps Effron’s greatest tool in seeking his revenge against Dahlia. The Shifter had failed him in her dealings with the drow ranger, trying to trade the panther for the coveted Netherese sword, but Effron would not fail. If he could get the cat, he believed he could remove one of Dahlia’s greatest allies from the playing board.
But Draygo Quick had forbidden it.
Draygo Quick.
Effron’s mentor, so he had thought.
The withered old warlock’s last words to him rang in his mind: “Idiot boy, I only kept you alive out of respect for your father. Now that he is no more, I am done with you. Be gone. Go and hunt her, young fool, that you might see your father again in the darker lands.”
Effron had tried to return to Draygo, to remedy the fallout between them.
He had been turned away by the old warlock’s student servants, in no uncertain terms.
And now this—and Effron knew that the Shifter’s visit had been precipitated by the old warlock’s plans for the panther. Plans that did not include Effron. Plans that would not help Effron’s pressing need.
Indeed, plans that would almost certainly hinder Effron’s pressing need.
The twisted young tiefling, his dead arm swinging uselessly behind him, crouched in the dark brush outside of Draygo Quick’s residence for much of the day.
Grimacing.