Part 1
THE PRESENT
In my homeland of Menzoberranzan, where demons play and drow revel at the horrible demise of rivals, there remains a state of necessary alertness and wariness. A drow off-guard is a drow murdered in Menzoberranzan, and thus few are the times when dark elves engage in exotic weeds or drinks that dull the senses.
Few, but there are exceptions. At the final ceremony of Melee-Magthere, the school of fighters that I attended, graduated students engage in an orgy of mind-blurring herbs and sensual pleasures with the females of Arach-Tinilith, a moment of the purest hedonism, a party of the purest pleasures without regard to future implications.
I rejected that orgy, though I knew not why at the time. It assaulted my sense of morality, I believed (and still do), and cheapened so many things that I hold precious. Now, in retrospect, I have come to understand another truth about myself that forced rejection of that orgy. Aside from the moral implications, and there were many, the mere notion of the mind-blurring herbs frightened and repulsed me. I knew that all along, of course as soon as I felt the intoxication at that ceremony, I instinctively rebelled against it but it wasn't until very recently that I came to understand the truth of that rejection, the real reason why such influences have no place in my life.
These herbs attack the body in various ways, of course, from slowing reflexes to destroying coordination altogether, but more importantly, they attack the spirit in two different ways. First, they blur the past, erasing memories pleasant and unpleasant, and second, they eliminate any thoughts of the future. Intoxicants lock the imbiber in the present, the here and now, without regard for the future, without consideration of the past. That is the trap, a defeatist perspective that allows for attempted satiation of physical pleasures wantonly, recklessly. An intoxicated person will attempt even foolhardy dares because that inner guidance, even to the point of survival instinct itself, can be so impaired. How many young warriors foolishly throw themselves against greater enemies, only to be slain? How many young women find themselves with child, conceived with lovers they would not even consider as future husbands?
That is the trap, the defeatist perspective, that I cannot tolerate. I live my life with hope, always hope, that the future will be better than the present, but only as long as I work to make it so. Thus, with that toil, comes the satisfaction in life, the sense of accomplishment we all truly need for real joy. How could I remain honest to that hope if I allowed myself a moment of weakness that could well destroy all I have worked to achieve and all I hope to achieve? How might I have reacted to so many unexpected crises if, at the time of occurrence, I was influenced by a mind-altering substance, one that impaired my judgment or altered my perspective?
Also, the dangers of where such substances might lead cannot be underestimated. Had I allowed myself to be carried away with the mood of the graduation ceremony of Melee-Magthere, had I allowed myself the sensual pleasures offered by the priestesses, how cheapened might any honest encounter of love have been?
Greatly, to my way of thinking. Sensual pleasures are, or should be, the culmination of physical desires combined with an intellectual and emotional decision, a giving of oneself, body and spirit, in a bond of trust and respect. In such a manner as that graduation ceremony, no such sharing could have occurred; it would have been a giving of body only, and more so than that, a taking of another's offered wares. There would have been no higher joining, no spiritual experience, and thus, no true joy.
I cannot live in such a hopeless basking as that, for that is what it is: a pitiful basking in the lower, base levels of existence brought on, I believe, by the lack of hope for a higher level of existence.
And so I reject all but the most moderate use of such intoxicants, and while I'll not openly judge those who so indulge, I will pity them their empty souls.
What is it that drives a person to such depths? Pain, I believe, and memories too wretched to be openly faced and handled. Intoxicants can, indeed, blur the pains of the past at the expense of the future. But it is not an even trade.
With that in mind, I fear for Wulfgar, my lost friend. Where will he find escape from the torments of his enslavement?
Chapter 1 INTO PORT
"I do so hate this place," remarked Robillard, the robed wizard. He was speaking to Captain Deudermont of Sea Sprite as the three-masted schooner rounded a long jettie and came in sight of the harbor of the northern port of Luskan.
Deudermont, a tall and stately man, mannered as a lord and with a calm, pensive demeanor, merely nodded at his wizard's proclamation. He had heard it all before, and many times. He looked to the city skyline and noted the distinctive structure of the Hosttower of the Arcane, the famed wizards' guild of Luskan. That, Deudermont knew, was the source of Robillard's sneering attitude concerning this port, though the wizard had been sketchy in his explanations, making a few offhand remarks about the "idiots" running the Hosttower and their inability to discern a true wizardly master from a conniving trickster. Deudermont suspected that Robillard had once been denied admission to the guild.
"Why Luskan?" the ship's wizard complained. "Would not Waterdeep have better suited our needs? No harbor along the entire Sword Coast can compare with Waterdeep's repair facilities."
"Luskan was closer," Deudermont reminded him.
"A couple of days, no more," Robillard retorted.
"If a storm found us in those couple of days, the damaged hull might have split apart, and all our bodies would have been food for the crabs and the fishes," said the captain. "It seemed a foolish gamble for the sake of one man's pride."
Robillard started to respond but caught the meaning of the captain's last statement before he could embarrass himself further. A great frown shadowed his face. "The pirates would have had us had I not timed the blast perfectly," the wizard muttered after he took a few moments to calm down.
Deudermont conceded the point. Indeed, Robillard's work in the last pirate hunt had been nothing short of spectacular. Several years before, Sea Sprite-the new, bigger, faster, and stronger Sea Sprite-had been commissioned by the lords of Waterdeep as a pirate hunter. No vessel had ever been as successful at the task, so much so that when the lookout spotted a pair of pirateers sailing the northern waters off the Sword Coast, so near to Luskan, where Sea Sprite often prowled, Deudermont could hardly believe it. The schooner's reputation alone had kept those waters clear for many months.
These pirates had come looking for vengeance, not easy merchant ship prey, and they were well prepared for the fight, each of them armed with a small catapult, a fair contingent of archers, and a pair of wizards. Even so, they found themselves outmaneuvered by the skilled Deudermont and his experienced crew, and out-magicked by the mighty Robillard, who had been wielding his powerful dweomers in vessel-to-vessel warfare for well over a decade. One of Robillard's illusions had given the appearance that Sea Sprite was dead in the water, her mainmast down across her deck, with dozens of dead men at the rails. Like hungry wolves, the pirates had circled, closer and closer, then had come in, one to port and one to starboard, to finish off the wounded ship.
In truth, Sea Sprite hadn't been badly damaged at all, with Robillard countering the offensive magic of the enemy wizards. The small pirate catapults had little effect against the proud schooner's armored sides.
Deudermont's archers, brilliant bowmen all, had struck hard at the closing vessels, and the schooner went from battle sail to full sail with precision and efficiency, the prow of the ship verily leaping from the water as she scooted out between the surprised pirateers.
Robillard dropped a veil of silence upon the pirate ships, preventing their wizards from casting any defensive spells, then plopped three fireballs-Boom! Boom! Boom!-in rapid succession, one atop each ship and one in between. Then came the conventional barrage from ballista and catapult, Sea Sprite's gunners soaring lengths of chain to further destroy sails and rigging and balls of pitch to heighten the flames.
De-masted and drifting, fully ablaze, the two pirateers soon went down. So great was the conflagration that Deudermont and his crew managed to pluck only a few survivors from the cold ocean waters.
Sea Sprite hadn't escaped unscathed, though. She was under the power of but one full sail now. Even more dangerous, she had a fair-sized crack just above the waterline. Deudermont had to keep nearly a third of his crew at work bailing, which was why he had steered for the nearest port-Luskan.
Deudermont considered it a fine choice, indeed. He preferred Luskan to the much larger port of Waterdeep, for while his financing had come from the southern city and he could find dinner at the house of any lord in town, Luskan was more hospitable to his common crew members, men without the standing, the manners, or the pretensions to dine at the table of nobility. Luskan, like Waterdeep, had its defined classes, but the bottom rungs on Luskan's social ladder were still a few above the bottom of Waterdeep's.
Calls of greeting came to them from every wharf as they neared the city, for Sea Sprite was well known here and well respected. The honest fishermen and merchant sailors of Luskan, of all the northern reaches of the Sword Coast, had long ago come to appreciate the work of Captain Deudermont and his swift schooner.
"A fine choice, I'd say," the captain remarked.
"Better food, better women, and better entertainment in Waterdeep," Robillard replied. "But no finer wizards," Deudermont couldn't resist saying. "Surely the Hosttower is among the most respected of mage guilds in all the Realms."
Robillard groaned and muttered a few curses, pointedly walking away.
Deudermont didn't turn to watch him go, but he couldn't miss the distinctive stomping of the wizard's hard-soled boots.
*****
"Just a short ride, then," the woman cooed, twirling her dirty blonde hair in one hand and striking a pouting posture. "A quick one to take me jitters off before a night at the tables."
The huge barbarian ran his tongue across his teeth, for his mouth felt as if it were full of fabric, and dirty cloth at that. After a night's work in the tavern of the Cutlass, he had returned to the wharves with Morik for a night of harder drinking. As usual, the pair had stayed there until after dawn, then Wulfgar had crawled back to the Cutlass, his home and place of employment, and straight to his bed.
But this woman, Delly Curtie, a barmaid in the tavern and Wulfgar's lover for the past few months, had come looking for him. Once, he had viewed her as a pleasurable distraction, the icing on his whisky cake, and even as a caring friend. Delly had nurtured Wulfgar through his first difficult days in Luskan. She had seen to his needs, emotional and physical, without question, without judgment, without asking anything in return. But of late the relationship had begun to shift, and not even subtly. Now that he had settled more comfortably into his new life, a life devoted almost entirely to fending the remembered pain of his years with Errtu, Wulfgar had come to see a different picture of Delly Curtie.
Emotionally, she was a child, a needful little girl. Wulfgar, who was well into his twenties, was several years older than she. Now, suddenly, he had become the adult in their relationship, and Delly's needs had begun to overshadow his own.
"Oh, but ye've got ten minutes for me, me Wulfgar," she said, moving closer and rubbing her hand across his cheek.
Wulfgar grabbed her wrist and gently but firmly moved her hand away. "A long night," he replied. "And I had hoped for more rest before beginning my duties for Arumn."
"But I've got a tingling-"
"More rest," Wulfgar repeated, emphasizing each word.
Delly pulled away from him, her seductive pouting pose becoming suddenly cold and indifferent. "Good enough for ye, then," she said coarsely. "Ye think ye're the only man wanting to share me bed?"
Wulfgar didn't justify the rant with an answer. The only answer he could have given was to tell her he really didn't care, that all of this-his drinking, his fighting-was a manner of hiding and nothing more. In truth, Wulfgar did like and respect Delly and considered her a friend-or would have if he honestly believed that he could be a friend. He didn't mean to hurt her.
Delly stood in Wulfgar's room, trembling and unsure. Suddenly, feeling very naked in her slight shift, she gathered her arms in front of her and ran out into the hall and to her own room, slamming the door hard.
Wulfgar closed his eyes and shook his head. He chuckled helplessly and sadly when he heard Delly's door open again, followed by running footsteps heading down the hall toward the outside door. That one, too, slammed, and Wulfgar understood that all the ruckus had been for his benefit Delly wanted him to hear that she was, indeed, going out to find comfort in another's arms.
She was a complicated one, the barbarian understood, carrying more emotional turmoil than even he, if that were possible. He wondered how it had ever gone this far between them. Their relationship had been so simple at the start, so straightforward: two people in need of each other. Recently, though, it had become more complex, the needs having grown into emotional crutches. Delly needed Wulfgar to take care of her, to shelter her, to tell her she was beautiful, but Wulfgar knew he couldn't even take care of himself, let alone another. Delly needed Wulfgar to love her, and yet the barbarian had no love to give. For Wulfgar there was only pain and hatred, only memories of the demon Errtu and the prison of the Abyss, wherein he had been tortured for six long years.
Wulfgar sighed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then reached for a bottle, only to find it empty. With a frustrated snarl, he threw it across the room, where it shattered against a wall. He envisioned, for just a moment, that it had smashed against Delly Curtie's face. The image startled Wulfgar, but it didn't surprise him. He vaguely wondered if Delly hadn't brought him to this point on purpose; perhaps this woman was no innocent child, but a conniving huntress. When she had first come to him, offering comfort, had she intended to take advantage of his emotional weakness to pull him into a trap? To get him to marry her, perhaps? To rescue him that he might one day rescue her from the miserable existence she had carved out for herself as a tavern wench?
Wulfgar realized that his knuckles had gone white from clenching his hands so very hard, and he pointedly opened them and took several deep, steadying breaths. Another sigh, another rub of his tongue over dirty teeth, and the man stood and stretched his huge, nearly seven-foot, frame. He discovered, as he did nearly every afternoon when he went through this ritual, that he had even more aches in his huge muscles and bones this day. Wulfgar glanced over at his large arms, and though they were still thicker and more muscular than that of nearly any man alive, he couldn't help but notice a slackness in those muscles, as if his skin was starting to hang a bit too loosely on his massive frame.
How different his life was now than it had been those mornings years ago in Icewind Dale, when he had worked the long day with Bruenor, his adoptive dwarven father, hammering and lifting huge stones, or when he had gone out hunting for game or giants with Drizzt, his warrior friend, running all the day, fighting all the day. The hours had been even more strenuous then, more filled with physical burden, but that burden had been just physical and not emotional. In that time and in that place, he felt no aches.
The blackness in his heart, the sorest ache, was the source of it all.
He tried to think back to those lost years, working and fighting beside Bruenor and Drizzt, or when he had spent the day running along the wind-blown slopes of Kelvin's Cairn, the lone mountain in Icewind Dale, chasing Catti-brie. . . .
The mere thought of the woman stopped him cold and left him empty and in that void, images of Errtu and the demon's minions inevitably filtered in. Once, one of those minions, the horrid succubus, had assumed the form of Catti-brie, a perfect image, and Errtu had convinced Wulfgar that he had managed to snare the woman, that she had been taken to suffer the same eternal torment as Wulfgar, because of Wulfgar.
Errtu had taken the succubus, Catti-brie, right before Wulfgar's horrified eyes and had torn the woman apart limb from limb, devouring her in an orgy of blood and gore.
Gasping for his breath, Wulfgar fought back to his thoughts of Catti-brie, of the real Catti-brie. He had loved her. She was, perhaps, the only woman he had ever loved, but she was lost to him now forever, he believed. Though he might travel to Ten-Towns in Icewind Dale and find her again, the bond between them had been severed, cut by the sharp scars of Errtu and by Wulfgar's own reactions to those scars.
The long shadows coming in through the window told him that the day neared its end and that his work as Arumn Gardpeck's bouncer would soon begin. The weary man hadn't lied to Delly when he had declared that he needed more rest, though, and so he collapsed back onto his bed and fell into a deep sleep.
Night had settled thickly about Luskan by the time Wulfgar staggered into the crowded common room of the Cutlass.
"Late again, as if we're to be surprised by that," a thin, beady-eyed man named Josi Puddles, a regular at the tavern and a good friend of Arumn Gardpeck, remarked to the barkeep when they both noticed Wulfgar's entrance. "That one's workin' less and drinkin' ye dry."
Arumn Gardpeck, a kind but stern and always practical man, wanted to give his typical response, that Josi should just shut his mouth, but he couldn't refute Josi's claim. It pained Arumn to watch Wulfgar's descent. He had befriended the barbarian those months before, when Wulfgar had first come to Luskan. Initially, Arumn had shown interest in the man only because of Wulfgar's obvious physical prowess-a mighty warrior like Wulfgar could indeed be a boon to business for a tavern in the tough dock section of the feisty city. After his very first conversation with the man, Arumn had understood that his feelings for Wulfgar went deeper than any business opportunity. He truly liked the man.
Always, Josi was there to remind Arumn of the potential pitfalls, to remind Arumn that, sooner or later, mighty bouncers made meals for rats in gutters.
"Ye thinkin' the sun just dropped in the water?" Josi asked Wulfgar as the big man shuffled by, yawning.
Wulfgar stopped, and turned slowly and deliberately to glare at the little man.
"Half the night's gone," Josi said, his tone changing abruptly from accusational to conversational, "but I was watchin' the place for ye. Thought I might have to break up a couple o' fights, too."
Wulfgar eyed the little man skeptically. "You couldn't break up a pane of thin glass with a heavy cudgel," he remarked, ending with another profound yawn.
Josi, ever the coward, took the insult with a bobbing head and a self-deprecating grin.
"We do have an agreement about yer time o' work," Arumn said seriously.
"And an understanding of your true needs," Wulfgar reminded the man. "By your own words, my real responsibility comes later in the night, for trouble rarely begins early. You named sundown as my time of duty but explained that I'd not truly be needed until much later."
"Fair enough," Arumn replied with a nod that brought a groan from Josi. He was anxious to see the big man-the big man whom he believed had replaced him as Arumn's closest friend-severely disciplined.
"The situation's changed," Arumn went on. "Ye've made a reputation and more than a few enemies. Every night, ye wander in late, and yer . . . our enemies take note. I fear that one night soon ye'll stagger in here past the crest o' night to find us all murdered."
Wulfgar put an incredulous expression on his face and turned away with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"Wulfgar," Arumn called after him forcefully.
The barbarian turned about, scowling.
"Three bottles missing last night," Arumn said calmly, quietly, a note of concern evident in his tone.
"You promised me all the drink I desired," Wulfgar answered.
"For yerself," Arumn insisted. "Not for yer sculking little friend."
All about widened their eyes at that remark, for not many of Luskan's tavernkeepers would speak so boldly concerning the dangerous Morik the Rogue.
Wulfgar lowered his gaze and chuckled, shaking his head. "Good Arumn," he began, "would you prefer to be the one to tell Morik he is not welcome to your drink?"
Arumn narrowed his eyes, and Wulfgar returned the glare for just a moment.
Delly Curtie entered the room just then, her eyes red and still lined with tears. Wulfgar looked at her and felt a pang of guilt, but it was not something he would admit publicly. He turned and went about his duties, moving to threaten a drunk who was getting a bit too loud.
"He's playing her like he'd pick a lute," Josi Puddles remarked to Arumn.
Arumn blew a frustrated sigh. He had become quite fond of Wulfgar, but the big man's increasingly offensive behavior was beginning to wear that fondness thin. Delly had been as a daughter to Arumn for a couple of years. If Wulfgar was playing her without regard for her emotions, he and Arumn were surely heading for a confrontation.
Arumn turned his attention from Delly to Wulfgar just in time to see the big man lift the loudmouth by the throat, carry him to the door, and none too gently heave him out into the street.
"Man didn't do nothing," Josi Puddles complained. "He keeps with that act, and you'll not have single customer."
Arumn merely sighed.
*****
A trio of men in the opposite corner of the bar also studied the huge barbarian's movements with more than a passing interest. "Cannot be," one of them, a skinny, bearded fellow, muttered. "The world's a wider place than that."
"I'm telling ye it is," the middle one replied. "Ye wasn't aboard Sea Sprite back in them days. I'd not forget that one, not Wulfgar. Sailed with him all the way from Waterdeep to Memnon, I did, then back again, and we fought our share o' pirates along the way."
"Looks like a good one to have along for a pirate fight," remarked Waillan Micanty, the third of the group.
"So 'tis true!" said the second. "Not as good as his companion, though. Ye're knowin' that one. A dark-skinned fellow, small and pretty lookin', but fiercer than a wounded sahuagin, and quicker with a blade-or a pair o' the things-than any I ever seen."