"Did you fear that I would not go into the castle unless I felt something for Arrayan?"
"I had no idea that there was an Arrayan," Jarlaxle pointed out.
"But you enjoyed the manipulation."
"My friend…" Jarlaxle began, but Entreri cut him short.
"Don't call me that."
Again Entreri's tone caught the drow by surprise, as if that knife's edge in his voice had developed a wicked, serrated blade.
"You still cannot admit the obvious, I see," Jarlaxle said. He took a step back, almost expecting Entreri to draw his sword on him.
The assassin looked around.
"Knellict and his minions are long gone," Jarlaxle assured him, and he tapped his enchanted eye patch to accentuate his certainty.
"Jarlaxle knows," Entreri remarked. "Jarlaxle knows everything."
"It keeps us both alive."
"And again, that is by the choice of Jarlaxle."
"You are beginning to bore me."
Entreri rushed up to him and grabbed him by the throat.
Jarlaxle dropped a knife from his enchanted bracer into one hand, ready to plunge it home. But Entreri wasn't pressing the case, other than to shout in Jarlaxle's face, "Are you my father, then?"
"Hardly that."
"Then what?" Entreri asked, and he let go, sending Jarlaxle stumbling back a step. "You manipulate and carry me along, and for what? For glory? To give a dark elf credibility among the humans? For treasures that you cannot carry alone?"
"No such treasures exist," came the dry reply.
"Then for what?" Entreri yelled at him.
"For what," Jarlaxle echoed, with another of his little laughs and a shake of his head. "Why, for anything and for nothing at all."
Entreri stared at him with a puzzled expression.
"You have no purpose, no direction," Jarlaxle explained. "You wander about muttering to yourself. You walk no road, because you see no road before you. I would be doing you a favor if I killed you."
That brought a look showing a complete acceptance, even an eagerness, for the challenge.
"Is it not the truth?" Jarlaxle asked. "What is the point of your life, Artemis Entreri? Is it not your own emptiness that led you all those years into desiring a battle with Drizzt Do'Urden?"
"Every time you mention that name, you remind me how much I hate you."
"For giving you that which you desired? For facilitating your fight with the rogue drow? Ah, but did I steal the only thing in your life giving you meaning, by giving you that which you said you desired? A pitiful state of the heart, would you not agree?"
"What would you have me say? I only know that which I feel."
"And you feel like killing me."
"More than you would understand."
"Because I force you to look at yourself and you do not like what you see. Is that a reason to kill me, because I am offering to you a chance to sort through your own emotions? That is all the magic of the flute did to you, I suspect. It offered you the opportunity to look past your own emotional barriers."
"Did I ask for your help?"
"Friends help when they are not asked."
Entreri sighed and shook his head, but he could not deny any of what the drow had said. His shoulders slumped a bit, and Jarlaxle let the dagger fall to the ground behind him, certain then that he would need no weapons.
A few moments passed between them until finally Entreri looked up at the drow, his face calm, and asked, "Who are you?"
Jarlaxle laughed again, and it was a sincere expression of joy, for that was where he had hoped it would all lead.
"Why, Artemis Entreri, do you not yet know? Have you not come to understand any of it?"
"I understand less each day."
"I am your muse," Jarlaxle announced.
"What?"
"I am he who will give meaning to your life, Artemis, my friend. You do not even begin to understand the breadth of your powers. You know how well you might skulk through the shadows, you know all too well your prowess with the blade, but you have never understood what those well-deserved, well-earned powers can bring you."
"You assume that I want anything."
"Oh, you do. If you can only dare to wish for it."
"What? Athrogate's Citadel of Assassins? Shall we move to dominate them?"
"Of course, to begin."
"Begin?"
"Think large, my friend. Make your goal expansive. Athrogate will give us the insight and bona fides we need to find a strong place within the Citadel's organization—we will quickly learn whether it is worth our time to overtly dominate the place or merely to covertly exert enough control to render them harmless to us."
"Couldn't we just kill the annoying little dwarf instead?"
Jarlaxle laughed. "There has been a void of power up here for many years."
"Since the fall of Zhengyi."
"Vaasa is ours for the taking."
"Vaasa?" Entreri could hardly repeat the word, and for one of the few times in all his life, he actually stuttered. "Y-you would go against King Gareth?"
Jarlaxle shrugged. "Perhaps. But there are other ways." He ended by holding up the dragon skull gemstone. "The sisters will learn of a new balance of power between us, to begin with. And within this stone lies control of the castle and a new ally."
"An ally that will bite us in half."
Jarlaxle shook his head. "Not while I am in possession of his phylactery. He and I are already in communication, I assure you. If I choose to let him out again, he will only do so with great trust in me, for if I destroy the phylactery, I destroy the dracolich's spirit. Utterly."
"Gareth will send soldiers to the castle."
"And I will let them stay for a while."
"Vaasa?"
"At least."
"You will go against a legendary paladin king?"
"Come now, can you not admit that it might be fun?"
Entreri started to speak several times, but nothing decipherable came forth. Finally he just shook his head, sighed, and turned away, moving back down toward the flat ground.
"Trust me," said Jarlaxle.
"My muse?"
"Your friend."
EPILOGUE
"Did the fool human pass your silly little test?" Kimmuriel Oblodra asked Jarlaxle a few days later, off in the shadows beneath the Vaasan Gate.
"Do not underestimate Artemis Entreri," Jarlaxle replied, "or the value he brings to me—to us."
"And you should not overestimate the power of the skull gems you have found," Kimmuriel warned, for he had just finished inspecting the pair at Jarlaxle's request. He had spoken with the dracolich, Urshula by name, and had confirmed Jarlaxle's suspicions that the beast would not dare to go against the possessor of the phylactery.
"They are but the beginning," Jarlaxle said with a grin. "Artemis Entreri and I have an audience with the paladin king in two days, just south of here in Bloodstone Village. We will be received as heroes for our efforts in Vaasa and as solemn witnesses to the end of Gareth's heroic niece."
He couldn't help but chuckle at the irony of that last statement. If King Gareth only knew!
Kimmuriel looked at Jarlaxle, wary, recognizing that look of confidence and grandiose schemes in his eyes, for he had seen that look from his former master dozens of times over the centuries. But they were not in the Underdark, in Menzoberranzan where Bregan D'aerthe and Jarlaxle had held many secret trumps.
"Have you found another Crenshinibon?" the psionicist asked with obvious disgust and concern.