"I will try to discover where he might be with the artifact, and what trouble they together might already be causing," Cadderly explained, not reading Danica's expression very well and wondering, perhaps, if she was doubting him.
"You do that," the more-than-convinced woman said in all seriousness. "Right away."
A squeal from inside the maze turned them both in that direction.
"Pikel," the woman explained.
Cadderly smiled. "Lost again?"
"Again?" Danica asked. "Or still?"
They heard some rumbling off to the side and saw Pikel's more traditional brother, Ivan Bouldershoulder, rolling toward the maze grumbling with every step. "Doodad," the yellow-bearded dwarf said sarcastically, referring to Pikel's pronunciation of his calling. "Yeah,
Doo-dad," Ivan grumbled. "Can't even find his way out of a hedgerow."
"And you will help him?" Cadderly called to the dwarf.
Ivan turned curiously, noting the pair, it seemed, for the first time. "Been helpin' him all me life," he snorted.
Both Cadderly and Danica nodded and allowed Ivan his fantasy. They knew well enough, if Ivan did not, that his helping Pikel more often caused problems for both of the dwarves. Sure enough, within the span of a few minutes, Ivan's calls about being lost echoed no less than Pikel's. Cadderly and Danica, and the twins sitting outside the devious maze, thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment.
A few hours later, after preparing the proper sequence of spells and after checking on the magical circle of protection the young-again priest always used when dealing with even the most minor of the creatures of the lower planes, Cadderly sat in a cross-legged position on the floor of his summoning chamber, chanting the incantation that would bring a minor demon, an imp, to him.
A short while later, the tiny, bat-winged, horned creature materialized in the protection circle. It hopped all about, confused and angry, finally focusing on Cadderly. It spent some time studying the man, no doubt trying to get some clues to his demeanor. Imps were often summoned to the material plane, sometimes for information, other times to serve as familiars for wizards of evil weal.
"Deneir?" the imp asked in a coughing, raspy voice that Cadderly thought seemed both typical and fitting to its smoky natural environment. "You wear the clothing of a priest of Deneir."
The creature was staring at the red band on his hat, Cadderly knew, on which was set a porcelain-and-gold pendant depicting a candle burning above an eye, the symbol of Deneir.
Cadderly nodded.
"Ahck!" the imp said and spat upon the ground.
"Hoping for a wizard in search of a familiar?" Cadderly asked slyly.
"Hoping for anything other than you, priest of Deneir," the imp replied.
"Accept that which has been given to you," Cadderly said. "A glimpse of the material plane is better than none, after all, and a reprieve from your hellish existence."
"What do you want, priest of Deneir?"
"Information," Cadderly replied, but even as he said it, he realized that his questions would be difficult indeed, perhaps too much so for so minor a demon. "All that I require of you is that you give to me the name of a greater demonic source, that I might bring it forth."
The imp looked at him curiously, tilting its head as a dog might, and licking its thin lips with a pointed tongue.
"Nothing greater than a nalfeshnie," Cadderly quickly clarified, seeing the impish smile growing and wanting to limit the power of whatever being he next summoned. A nalfeshnie was no minor demon, but was certainly within Cadderly's power to control, at least long enough for him to get what he needed.
"Oh, I has a name for you, priest of Deneir…" the imp started to say, but it jerked spasmodically as Cadderly began to chant a spell of torment. The imp fell to the floor, writhing and spitting curses.
"The name?" Cadderly asked. "And I warn you, if you deceive me and try to trick me into summoning a greater creature, I will dismiss it promptly and find you again. This torment is nothing compared to that which I will exact upon you!"
He said the words with conviction and with strength, though in truth, it pained the gentle man to be doing even this level of torture, even upon a wretched imp. He reminded himself of the importance of his quest and bolstered his resolve.
"Mizferac!" the imp screamed out. "A glabrezu, and a stupid one!"
Cadderly released the imp from his spell of torment, and the creature gave a beat of its wings and righted itself, staring at him coldly. "I did your bidding, evil priest of Deneir. Let me go!"
"Be gone, then," said Cadderly, and even as the little beast began fading from view, offering a few obscene gestures, Cadderly had to toss in, "I will tell Mizferac what you said concerning its intelligence."
He did indeed enjoy that last expression of panic on the face of the little imp.
Cadderly brought Mizferac in later that same day and found the towering pincer-armed glabrezu to be the embodiment of all that he hated about demons. It was a nasty, vicious, conniving, and wretchedly self-serving creature that tried to get as much gain as it could out of every word. Cadderly kept their meeting short and to the point. The demon was to inquire of other extra-planar creatures about the whereabouts of a dark elf named Jarlaxle, who was likely on the surface of Faerun. Furthermore, Cadderly put a powerful geas on the demon, preventing it from actually walking the material world, but retreating only back to the Abyss and using sources to discern the information.
"That will take longer," Mizferac said.
"I will call on you daily," Cadderly replied, putting as much anger without adding any passion whatsoever as he could into his timbre. "Each passing day I will grow more impatient, and your torment will increase."
"You make a terrible enemy in Mizferac, Cadderly Bonaduce, Priest of Deneir," the glabrezu replied, obviously trying to shake him with its knowledge of his name.
Cadderly, who heard the mighty song of Deneir as clearly as if it was a chord within his own heart, merely smiled at the threat. "If ever you find yourself free of your bonds and able to walk the surface of Toril, do come and find me, Mizferac the fool. It will please me greatly to reduce your physical form to ash and banish your spirit from this world for a hundred years."
The demon growled, and Cadderly dismissed it, simply and with just a wave of his hand and an utterance of a single word. He had heard every threat a demon could give and many times. After the trials the young priest had known in his life, from facing a red dragon to doing battle with his own father, to warring against the chaos curse, to, most of all, offering his very life up as sacrifice to his god, there was little any creature, demonic or not, could say to him that would frighten him.
He recalled the glabrezu every day for the next tenday, until finally the fiend brought him some news of the Crystal Shard and the drow, Jarlaxle, along with the surprising information that Jarlaxle no longer possessed the artifact, but traveled in the company of a human, Artemis Entreri, who did.
Cadderly knew that name well from the stories that Drizzt and Catti-brie had told him in their short stay at the Spirit Soaring. The man was an assassin, a brutal killer. According to the demon, Entreri, along with the Crystal Shard and the dark elf Jarlaxle, was on his way to the Snowflake Mountains.