Disclaimer: The recognizable characters in this fanfiction were created by R. A. Salvatore in association with the legal entity Wizards of the Coast, who owns relevant copyrights to additional Forgotten Realms material referred to herein. The characters are used without permission but no material profit of any kind is being made from the following work. WotC reserve rights to Forgotten Realms material, but all of the situations unique to this work of fan fiction are property of the writer.

dark entries

After a blistering hot day of casing a sandstone tower, in a sandy desert, with wind blown sand leaving a fine layer of dust across his skin where his loose cloak and turban left off, the stubborn killer was entertaining the suggestion Dondon had left him with a day prior. He'd traversed the desert innumerable times on business for both Pook and Basadoni as well for the profession that made him famous. In those many journeys he'd never had the need, or desire, to dig into the inhospitable landscape and spend any amount of time in one place. All desert dwellers knew that to do so under normal circumstances was tantamount to suicide.

Over the hours of observation, Entreri kept track of the sun's travel across the pale sky, knowing there was less chance of being observed as soon as it was behind him. Not that he'd thought a chance for observation was likely; there had been little sign of living movement since he'd arrived. Nothing beyond the occasional insect had attracted the assassin's attention.

As for the reports of a feeling of debilitating uneasiness; Entreri had felt less fear and more tension. There was a disturbing quality to what he assumed was the air or ambience of the sandy wasteland that felt amazingly familiar to the assassin. Rather than unhinge him, Entreri found the oddly familiar feeling brought up irritation and anger. The closer he inched to the tower, the stronger the sensation became. His strong will kept him from acting on his growing irritation.

The sandstone tower was much like the reports and construction details Entreri had studied. A missing gateway was indicated on the maps that all firsthand observers claimed did not exist. It was the tower's placement, seeming to grow out of the desert's many shifting sand dunes which revealed the truth of the matter.

Over time the desert wind had reshaped the sand dunes and for many years one had flirted with overrunning the structure. The desert's mercurial sands surrounding the tower covered and uncovered the doorway in the space of hours. Entreri had seen half the vaulted gate when he'd arrived in the morning gloom, only to see it swallowed up to the elegantly carved eave.

Originally the assassin had planned to scale the wall and make an entry through the topmost gated windows, rather than the lower windows, which were more obvious points of entry. The appearance of the nearly covered lower doorway called him to consider altering his carefully considered plans.

There was no room for something as trite as love in Entreri's heart, the closest he came to that emotion was his obsession for complete independence. Coming in a close second was the extreme satisfaction of defeating all challenges. In achieving both goals, the assassin was often given to meticulous planning and calculations. In the unlikely event of an unseen calculation throwing his plans askew, Entreri was skilled in improvisation. As he considered the buried gate, he began to alter his previous plans.

There was a trick he'd seen performed by cons in Calimport he believed could carry him through the most unlikely of entries. Internally he allowed himself a short stab of amusement; who would have thought the entrance to a wizard's tower with the least potential alarms would be the front door?

An hour later, the setting sun signaled Entreri's stealthy approach under cover of the deep shadows the tower and closest sand dune provided. As he moved steadily closer to the stone edifice, the sense of tension and irritation that had been living under his skin the whole day intensified dramatically. Anger shot along his limbs in response and his heart rate began to increase. By the time he was thirty meters from the tower, Entreri became aware of a sound other than the wind whipping the sand across the desolate landscape: his teeth were grinding.

On the heels of his inexplicable irritation came impressions of many of the horrors he'd seen in his two decades of life. An incident of public execution, a guild member whose hand was removed on the second try, a leering man that seemed eerily familiar, several unwilling informants, and a multitude of other incidents; too many to sort through. All were unwanted and unprofessional things to be circulating through his mind on or off a job.

Snarling silently, the assassin knew he would either have to resort to impairing one of his most reliable senses or find himself doing something stupid. What kind of stupid, he didn't know, but he felt it would be something akin to suddenly throwing himself at the stone tower and unleashing unparalleled and senseless fury upon it. With his bare fists.

Moving quickly, Entreri withdrew a tiny paper-wrapped parcel from the folds of his cloak, and untwisted the ends. Inside was a malleable wax he'd specifically obtained for use against Koedrobo's discipline. He separated the distasteful substance into equal shares and tucked each half underneath his turban and into his ears. He tried not to think too closely where the wax had come from. There were no truly vile things that would stand between him and a mark.

The sensation rattling his nerves faded immediately after his ears were plugged. Entreri would have been relieved with the slow return of his professional cool, if the wax hadn't also stolen his acute hearing. His fine features set in grim expression under the desert headgear as he considered the unpleasant alternative: far better to impair his hearing than cripple himself in a frothing fit of rage.

The unnerving sensation that had assaulted him had almost completely dispersed with the blocking of his ears, but there remained a faint edge of tension outlining his thoughts. It wasn't strong enough to concern the assassin as he crossed the final few meters to the nearly buried gateway.

There were less than two meters of gate visible, making the locks at least a third of his height deep in sand. He wasn't entirely sure how far down he could make his trick work, but he supposed he could hold his breath long enough if the need arose. Crouching inside the unlikely shelter, sand drifting over his feet, Entreri unwound the long length of cloth wrapped around his head and shook it out. All such wrappings were constructed of lightfast and breathable materials to shield from the sun, but allow air in to cool the body; Entreri's was no different and the very thing he needed.

He made sure his set of lock picks were secured tightly against one wrist before further impairing his senses. This time, he draped the loose material over his face and tied it securely at the back of his head. He was not completely blind; the material was light, allowing him to see vague images and patches of light and dark. Where he planned to go, even that much was more than he needed.

Beginning to breathe calmly in preparation for holding his breath, Entreri placed his hands side by side and dove them into the loose sand. He found that working his hands in an undulating motion increased the speed in which his arms sank into the sand. Unconcerned with the ridiculousness of his appearance, the assassin ducked his head between his biceps. With his arms protectively smoothing the line of his head and displacing the sand about them, it wasn't as hard to sink into the sand as he thought it would be, though it became more difficult the deeper he went.

Filling his lungs to a careful capacity, Entreri brought his strong legs up and braced his feet against the bare shelter of the gate's stone frame. He pushed at the framework and succeeded in knifing down gradually into the sand, parallel to the disputed doors. As he descended he kept a careful mind of his sense of direction. He also took a cautious attempt at breathing and was rewarded with an intake of musty, yet breathable, air.

An uncharacteristic grin stretched across Entreri's swallowed features at the breath of air. He'd learned the trick years ago, watching a conman working crowd after crowd of religious pilgrims. The trickster had built up quite a racket by proclaiming himself in need of funds to start up churches dedicated to whatever deity the travelers professed to believe in.

To prove his sincerity, one of the pilgrims would be bid to dig a hole in the sand while the con covered his head with a bag 'to keep dirt out of his nose and mouth.' The pilgrims were then invited to hold him upside down, with his head in the hole, while another pilgrim filled the depression with sand. The conman could keep his head buried indefinitely without suffocating, proving himself touched by their deity. After they pulled him up, funds would flow into the man's deceitful pockets.

Implementing a trick used by men to take advantage of the religiously inclined appealed directly to Entreri's small, very dark, sense of humor.

By the time Entreri was deep enough, the trick's usefulness had ceased. There was too much pressure, the sand too tightly packed, for any amount of breathable air to be available to the assassin. This notion hardly disturbed the deadly man; he was used to holding his breath for long periods of time.

Working his hands slowly through the sand, Entreri easily found the doors. He spent a few heart beats locating the seam between the double doors and following them down to a large set of locks. Mentally, Entreri noted that if he was cautious, he would shortly be able to add another accomplishment to his private list of dangerous feats: unlocking a wizard's front door, while upside down, ears plugged, blind-folded, and buried in sand. He refused to contemplate what would happen should he make a mistake.

Entreri withdrew his lock picks and began to work over the gateway's many locks with careful precision. He was dismayed to find the sand also impaired his highly sensitive fingers. This was, perhaps, the greatest source of concern he'd considered before putting the unlikely plan into action. All thieves relied heavily on the information their fingers read from locks and traps. He found himself working in slow motion, which he inevitably began to calculate in terms of pressure from his lungs. It wouldn't be long until the dull ache beginning in his chest would transform into stabbing pain.

Calm in the face of possible death by suffocation, Entreri did not push himself to hurry and open himself up to the blunders that waited for the reckless. There was no need for worry; the door's locks were conventionally trapped, but sand had made poisoned needles ineffective and fouled an implement designed to break lock picks and the fingers that held them. Entreri was able to work all the large tumblers over and unlock the door without difficulty. If there were any wards on the gate, he believed sand had also worn them away long ago.

Lungs beginning to constrict in greater pain, the assassin grasped each door's handle and turned them up and out. The doors moved slowly inward, but the assassin immediately felt the rush of the sand around him as it began to pour into what the tower's plans had described as an antechamber. Working quickly, Entreri arched his legs over freely into the room and used the weight of the lower half of his body to right himself and pull his upper body out of the sand.

Entreri took a deep, gasping breath of air as he pulled the edge of his head covering over his dark eyes and plucked one of the pieces of wax from his ear. When his feet had hit the antechamber's floor, they had sunk into a thick layer of sand; now it was nearly up to his knees. He knew he would never be able to shut the gate again; not with tons of sand keeping them lodged open. Fortunately that had never been his plan.

Finding himself in a new race against time, Entreri uprooted his feet and raced to the antechamber's doors. He pressed his unplugged ear up against the door, listening for more than the sound of rushing sand. There was nothing, not even the sensation that had put him on edge outside the tower.

Sensing all was clear, the assassin turned his attention to the less imposing inner gates, which were lit by the fading light and darkening sky immediately behind him. These were also locked and trapped, but with no deceptive grains to muddy his tactile impressions, he made short work of locks and traps. He managed to open the door on the right and slip through with a minimum of sand before closing the inner door behind him and pitching himself into sudden blackness.

Despite the time his eyes had been covered and the shadowed dregs of the sun's setting light in the antechamber, Entreri was still adjusting from watching the tower and gleaming dunes most of the day. He instinctively sidled along a wall, leaving no footsteps on the sandy surface of the stone floor. Using his hands for eyes, to confirm what he had memorized as the ground level's layout, he slipped silently into the cobwebs of a darkened corner.

No light source made itself known while Entreri's eyes adjusted to the dimness. Losing his sense of vision didn't worry the assassin; he'd completed missions in the same circumstances. He was more uncomfortable with losing his hearing; a sense that more than made up for his eyes. In response to his blindness, he removed the other ear plug and slipped it into his clothing with the other. Hidden as he was, he also took an extra moment to untie the knot in his head scarf and wind it about his head and face again.

In the darkness he didn't have vision to encroach on his mind's eye image of the tower's interior; it was easy to lay his mental picture over his open eyes and navigate it. The sound and feel of sand, spanning far from his point of entry, told him the place was long unused. The musty scent of dry mold and dust confirmed his estimation. His outward senses and experience with blackened rooms kept him from bumping into any stray implements or carriage. It also kept him clear of any possible creature the wizard might have seeded the place with as a macabre security measure.

Gliding through the darkness, Entreri lost little time finding the central stair that spiraled up through the middle of the tower on its way to the topmost floor. He found the interior of the staircase significantly more used. The locked door leading into the tower's subterranean cellars was cold under his questing fingertips and without cobwebs on the iron rung that would pull it open. A quick investigation of the lock revealed no traps, convincing the assassin the door was designed to keep something within rather than keeping an intruder from stealing down.

An assassin rather than a treasure hunter, Entreri left the door locked. As he advanced up the stairs away from it, he considered unlocking it as a possible contingency, but decided against alerting the mage too soon. Besides, he was not convinced he would need such unreliable, possibly nonexistent, back up.

As he ascended the tight spiral he counted the many landings he passed. He noted the vague light entering the higher floors from the windows he had decided to bypass. It was not yet full dark, but the desert's eerie scene of orange dunes and indigo sky. If Entreri wasn't a man apt to deny beauty, the haze might have stilled him in his journey.

Halfway up the tower, the shadowy shape of Artemis Entreri paused; a faint sound had begun from the floor above him as well as the floor below. The assassin tensed, assuming for an instant he had triggered a security measure he had failed to sense. He brushed the notion away as quickly as it arrived, noting the almost imperceptible vibration of the stone stairs he had traversed. The sound, he reasoned, was the myriad voices of whatever materials would react to the low vibration. Glass, loose metal implements, any number of household items or wizardly materials would react audibly to the fine shuddering of stone.

Entreri's hand stole into the folds of his clothing and withdrew the wax pieces again. He was loath to steal away his hearing, but the vibration of the structure meant the mage was casting. Of course, he reasoned, if the mage was casting, it also meant he was depleting his stores of spells. In addition, experimentation meant the man was also secure in his solitude and unlikely to be equipped with spells needed to defend against a home invasion.

In the end, Entreri slipped one piece into his sleeve for easy retrieval and the other into his left ear. He continued up the stairs, leading with his right side, concentrating on the growing noise and vibration as he traveled further up the staircase.

After several more full revolutions within the spiral, Entreri was again clenching his jaw. This time he was defending against the rattling strength of the vibration, which was accompanied by a dull hum and a source of light. The hum, Entreri noted, as he made what he knew was his final approach on the stairs was probably the audible source of the annoying vibration.

Any noise the deadly assassin made while traversing the last few stairs, which he was certain was inaudible under normal circumstances, was completely swallowed up by the continued noise emanating beyond the landing. He was surprised to see no door had been installed on the landing to ward against unwanted intrusion. Taking advantage of the oversight, Entreri squinted against the floor's dim light to take measure of the interior.

Contrary to many of his previous marks, the room was neither embarrassingly cluttered and disorganized nor strewn artfully with expensive furnishings. What he found was the workroom of a highly, possibly obsessively, organized wizard. The light was not the typical firelight he was used to, but a clean white light that came from strategically placed points around the room. Light also filtered in from several evenly placed, and gated, windows spanning the outer wall.

Work benches of various designs and materials were arranged in neat ranks, far ends radiating out from the outer walls. There were few implements or obvious works in progress on the tables. Entreri did note more than one bench fitted with axles that would allow the platform to be tilted: the same ones were fitted with a variety of manacles with serrated edges meant to dissuade an unwilling participant from struggling.

Of most interest to the hired killer were the glass cases lining what he could see of the curved outer wall. There were two such cases on either side of every gated window. He bit back an urge to grind his teeth when he realized the glass cases held shelf after shelf of crystal bottles. Three of the cases held nothing but bottles topped with the blue stoppers he was looking for.

It looked like the assassin would be providing Pook's guild an interesting, and brief, sideline in voice fencing. How many people would be happy to pay an exorbitant fee to get their voices back? There were enough creative minds in the guild to decode the labels and plan the ransom. It was a plan that appealed to the cunning assassin's mind more than shipping all the fragile bottles to Baldur's Gate.

When the vibration and noise faded away, Entreri took another look into the room. He hadn't seen his mark yet and assumed the man was on the opposite side of the room, on the other side of the staircase's solid wall. Trying to place the mage, he backed down the stairs until he was against the lower half of the room's inner wall. Sly fingers felt the stone for other vibrations or clues. With no tactile clues forthcoming, he cautiously placed his unplugged ear near the wall and listened intently for information on the mage's location.

At first, the skilled assassin heard nothing, but then he heard the faint strains of a woman's voice. He scowled at this new bit of information and pulled away from the stone. Either the mage had a visitor or a prisoner. Entreri, of course, had no compunctions about killing both if needed. The more eccentric the wizard, he thought, the more complications cropped up.

Placing the wizard in his mental map, Entreri returned to the doorway. He took note of the edges for wards or evidence of powerful sigils and found none. Entreri's ample experience with breaking and entering was more than up to the task of discerning most, if not all, protections against entry. What concerned him was the mage's dedication to his unique discipline.

Absolute self confidence, rather than blinding pride, led the assassin into the room after slipping a loose thread into the breach before him. He reasoned that sound-based defenses would affect inanimate objects in the same way it would interact with animated ones. From inside the room he saw the wall next to him was also lined with glass cases, the closest held bottles with green stoppers. As he moved further away from the doorway, he could see the interior floor plan had been significantly altered.

All the walls previously separating the floor into rooms had been knocked out save two situated far from the stairwell's entry. Entreri assumed the walls were evidence of a single workroom where Terthus performed his more sensitive experiments and dangerous castings. There was, again, only one entry to the room and it was the assassin's plan to lie in wait, perched above the door, daggers at the ready. As always, the entries were always more work than the actual killing.

Well lit and filled with glass, the work room was not the optimal habitat for an assassin, but Entreri was a master of his dark trade despite his youth; and he wasn't one of the top paid killers in Calimshan without good reason. Entreri made good on every shadow and visual block the many workbenches provided him. He moved quickly and with assurance, making swift gains toward the door.

Unfortunately, fate was what the assassin liked to regard as a harsh taskmaster. When Entreri heard the door latch, he ducked out of sight, finding himself still too far away from the door to make an effective surprise attack. As a precaution, he slipped the other half of wax into his unplugged ear and monitored the wizard's entrance by watching the reflections cast on the glass cases and other reflective surfaces throughout the work room.

From his vantage behind a black workbench, Entreri could see the man paused, his hand still on the door. Terthus, for he perfectly fit the clean shaven image the assassin had been given, was looking down at the latch, his lips moving as he gazed at the surface. In a world of perfect silence, Entreri couldn't tell if the man was casting a spell to protect the work room, talking to the woman still within, or exhibiting a wizardly tendency to talk to himself. With his head turned down and to the side, Entreri couldn't read his lips. In any case, the patient killer did not breathe nor move a muscle. All he heard was the quiet beat of his own heart.

As utterly motionless as he was, it came as a surprise when the mage suddenly released the latch of the door and looked immediately in Entreri's direction. Forgetting his surprise, he seized the mage's shock and ran on instinct.

Alive and full of motion, the assassin opted for a visible assault to further drive the mage's shock home. With a half score of workbenches between him and his target, Entreri found the fastest route would be one that used them to his advantage. He vaulted on top of the one he used as cover and raced across it, leaping to the following ones without missing stride, scattering the few with implements in an effort to further distract the mage with violent sound.

Initially his plan seemed to work; Terthus flinched visibly when the assassin rushed over the top of the first workbench. He flinched, too, every time metal implements scattered across workbenches and struck the floor. However, he was also working his mouth in what Entreri knew to be a casting and raising his hands to complete a physical component of some kind.

Far from worried by the wizard's actions, Entreri concentrated on the man's timing. He knew the spell would go off before he could make his attack; the trick was to get close enough to make his move before the mage could get his second casting together.

Just as the intensely concentrating man's hands began to fly out toward Entreri, the wily assassin dropped down behind the workbench closest to the mage. In most situations, the desk would have been ample cover; no mage wanted to fill his workroom with bolts of lightning or devastating fireballs. The worst he expected was the annoyingly unerring flight of burning magic missiles to slam into his body as he flew around the side of the workbench to finish his deadly drive.

The assassin was not surprised to discover Terthus' attack was unconventional, even if didn't expect what came. A wave of punishing force traveled through the desk, without affecting it in the slightest, but hit the killer with murderous strength. The impact was so violent as it moved through Entreri that it knocked him off his feet and propelled him brutally into the workbench behind him.

Instinct alone launched the assassin's arms protectively around his head, saving him from unconsciousness but not from becoming temporarily stunned. He knew he had very little time to get to his feet and make his final assault on the mage. There was no time for the room to spin chaotically around his head. It was his iron will alone that forced him to his feet, even though there was little air to speak of in his lungs and a worrying feeling of broken bones scraping together in his torso.

Terthus was shocked again by the assassin's rapid recovery, but he was already mouthing another spell and Entreri imagined the movements of his lips looked disturbingly similar to the first casting. Adrenaline spurred the assassin on, heightening his already remarkable speed in a moment that was all or nothing. The daggers were out of their sheathes and whipped up in mere silver blurs as the assassin leapt at the wizard.

Right before Entreri swept his arms down in a glittering arc of death, Terthus' arms propelled toward the assassin. The assassin was so close to the mage when the spell went off, one dagger sliced neatly through his lip, while Terthus' fingertips tangled momentarily in the folds of Entreri's clothing.

The impact seemed far more serious at such a close proximity. The wave traveled through his entire body, throwing him backwards as it had before. It felt like his whole body was vibrating and bruising as it passed through him, forcing him along in its wake, until he crashed against the closest work surface. He had farther to be flung this time, but still barely managed to protect his head in time. It was of little help.