But the beast caught my arm in its hand.

  In desperation, I reached my other hand into the nearest barrel and grabbed a handful of powder. Without thinking, I hurled the white stuff into the beast's ugly face.

  The sea-green thing howled but didn't loosen its grip on my forearm. "Sssalt!" it shrieked. "The tasssty snack attacks with salt! Oh ho! I leeve in the sea, foolish thing. Salt is my friend, is not yours."

  At least it wasn't eating me as it spoke, I thought, reaching into the next barrel. Again, only powder, but I threw it in the troll's face, hoping to buy some time.

  But this time the powder was black-it was pepper imported from the town of Nesme, that rare spice I had found when I first came aboard. The creature yelped in pain.

  It released my hand and grasped at its face with its filthy claws. I grabbed another handful and ran between its massive legs, heading toward the wall through the path the brute had just cleared, a plan forming in my head.

  I pocketed the spice as I approached the gaping hole in the hull. Quickly I scanned the nearby barrels to be sure everything I needed was still there, popping open a barrel and a box. Then I went to the hole, using my sword to pull the dangling rope back onto the ship. Perrault's sword was a good one, and I quickly cut the other rope tying the launch to the hull, allowing the small craft to swing freely from the overhead rope.

  Heavy footsteps thumped behind me like the beating of my own heart. I had no time!

  I turned and grabbed three small objects from the open box-the ivory carvings.

  Quickly I put them up into the air in a graceful juggle.

  "Hey, you," I called to the monster. "If you don't eat me, I'll give you these!"

  "Oh ho, the tasssty snack does not want to be snack, does it then? Eet bribes me! But no, I thinksss, I want the snack. Sailing is hungry work, so eet ees." The thing stopped, deep in thought-as deep as such a creature was capable of, I figured. It spoke again. "I can take the treenkets from eets corpse, can't I?" It moved forward again.

  I tossed one of the pieces toward the beast, yelling, "Catch!"

  Sure enough, the dim-witted troll glanced up at the flying object-not for long, but long enough. I pegged off the other two pieces, hitting the thing right between the eyes with both. But it hardly felt the blows.

  It roared and charged.

  I grabbed the open barrel and tipped its contents-hundreds of tiny ceramic marbles- directly into the wretch's path.

  The monster slipped and fell, crashing heavily into the wall beside the gaping hole.

  I did not wait. As soon as the barrel fell, I grabbed the loose rope and swung myself out toward the launch, climbing as fast as I could, hand over hand, up onto the small boat. The creature oriented itself quickly and appeared at the hole, snarling in rage.

  "You die now." Its voice, that unearthly gurgle, was lower in pitch and more intense. Even several feet away, I could feel and smell its horrid breath.

  The creature reached at me with its long arms and grabbed the side of the launch. Slowly, it began to pull the boat nearer.

  I could have cut at those hands with my saber, but I knew I would not dislodge the thing. Instead, I grabbed the rope still attached to the launch and began to climb.

  "You not escape," the troll promised, pulling harder, trying to bring the launch close enough to grab me before I got away. It leaned out of the ship, its foul breath billowing at me, its teeth gnashing hungrily. It leaned, and it pulled…

  I gripped the rope more tightly with my left hand and swung my sword with my right, cutting the rope just about where my knees dangled.

  Off balance, and suddenly burdened with the weight of the boat while leaning too far forward, the troll toppled and fell. It reached up to swat at me, but the strike had no strength and its claws did not dig in.

  Down fell the launch and the wretched beast along with it. The boat landed with a splash, and the troll landed atop it, smashing right through, reducing the rowboat to flotsam. The ripples looked an awful lot like those created by the ball of pitch, in precisely the same spot.

  The troll's strike had caused me to swing, and suddenly I was veering back toward the ship, toward the hole where the troll had ripped planks out of the vessel. I saw the sharp edges of broken wood rising up to meet me even as I fell, but I felt the pain of it gashing my chest for only a moment.

  Then I felt no more.

  Chapter Six

  When I awoke, I felt as if I were gently stepping out of a dream. In fact, I thought I was still dreaming.A most beautiful face hovered over me. Her eyes were the deepest, purest blue, and they smiled sadly at me, comforting me despite the burning pain in my chest. Her red-brown hair flowed over her shoulders, wet but still perfect.

  Looking at her, I recalled the fiery chariot, its archer diving out right before it crashed into the pirate ship…

  So that is why we won, I thought: The gods sent us an angel.

  "Who… are…?" My throat was so parched the words burned as spoke. I coughed, and pain seared my shoulder and my chest.

  "Rest, child." The woman stroked my forehead until the coughing eased. "My name is Catti-brie. Everything is all right now."

  I looked up to see the door opening. Three forms silhouetted against the incoming light-a dwarf, an elf, and a giant of a man.

  My eyes fell on the middle figure, on Drizzt Do'Urden, his lavender eyes burning with intensity. His skin appeared black in the dim light, I realized, and it was no trick.

  I had heard of dark elves before, of the drow who lived beneath the world. They were the subject of many nighttime stories, bogeymen who came out in the darkness to raid elven villages and kidnap babies.

  But I was not afraid of that elf, that drow. He had not turned me in to the captain when he'd had the chance. He understood what a night spent staring at the stars might mean to someone like me. In the brief time we'd spoken, I sensed no malice, only sympathy. For whatever reason, he had chosen to protect me.

  Drizzt stepped toward my bed, hesitation in his step. "How is he?" he asked in a low voice.

  I remembered the first time I laid eyes upon the elf, when he had appeared as a surface elf but had looked so uncomfortable in his own skin. I suddenly understood why. He had been wearing some sort of magical disguise. And it was gone. Now that he could be himself, the discomfort I sensed was gone, too.

  Cattibrie looked at the elf and his two companions. "I'm sure the boy appreciates your concern, but ye three are no help here." She waved them away and turned to me. "Ye all be going, now. I'll just be holdin' this one's hand a bit, while they take care of him." She nodded past me, and I followed her gaze to a pair of men entering the room. They carried a small bucket, steam rising off the top.

  I tried to mumble something, to ask what was happening, what they were doing, but I could not produce anything intelligible.

  I heard the door shut, and I felt her hand holding mine, strong and callused yet soft. The men set down the bucket-it was filled with black liquid, and I could feel the heat pouring off it. One of the men took up a large metal spoon.

  Catti-brie whispered something under her breath-a prayer, I thought-and the man lifted the spoon up to my wounded shoulder.

  Suddenly the pain worsened tenfold, a hundredfold. I tried to scream but there was no air in my lungs. I tried to focus on those blue eyes, but there was too much water, more tears than I knew I had. The pain was too intense and I passed out.

  Some time later, I awoke. "The tar cauterizes the wound," said a voice-a man's voice.

  "Cauterizes?" I mumbled, not even opening my eyes.

  "It burns the flesh together, so the wound won't bleed."

  "Sounds painful." I would have laughed if it didn't hurt so much.

  "I've been told it is. But it's better than the alternative." The man's voice was firm, but not unkind.

  "What is the alternative?" I was mumbling so badly, I could hardly believe the man could understand me.

  "Bleeding to death. And that is no way for a lucky child like you to die."

  At the words "lucky child" I opened my eyes, hopeful. But the man standing before me was unfamiliar-or, rather, I had never met him. He wore a regal, if threadbare, blue uniform, and he spoke clearly, with great dignity.

  "I am Captain Deudermont of Sea Sprite, and you are unlawfully aboard my ship," he said.

  Great, I thought. I save his ship from that troll and he's going to toss me overboard?

  "I'm very sorry, sir," I said. "But I have an explanation. You see, what I am-"

  "What you are, young sir, is a stowaway, and a thief," the captain spat.

  In spite of my throbbing shoulder, I sat up. I tried to respond but the captain held out his hand.

  "What you are not," Deudermont continued, "is a coward."

  I perked up-that hardly sounded like a bad thing.

  "Can you take orders?" he asked. I blinked a few times before answering. "Yes, sir."

  "Can you show dignity and bravery in the face of danger?" "Yes, sir."

  "Can you be loyal to those around you, peers as well as superiors?"

  "Oh, yes, sir, I can, sir."

  "Then, young man, I think I can find a place for you on my ship. If you so desire." For the first time, Captain Deudermont smiled- not a wide smile, but a dignified smile. And it was enough.

  I started to respond, but he cut me off. "Do not answer right now. You have many days of healing before you could be useful, anyway. We shall care for you until you're fit, and then you can give your answer." He turned to leave.

  "Wait! Sir!" I called with as much force as I could.

  He turned back. "Yes, young man?" "My name is Maimun. You… you never asked my name."

  Part Two

  "Took yerself long enough to get to the point!" the old pirate said with a chuckle."Exactly long enough," I answered.

  "Gave yer name ter Deudermont pretty danged quick. Yer thinkin' he's better'n me, more deservin' yer name? More deservin' yer respect?"

  "He didn't ask. You did. I do not reward greed."

  The chuckle turned into a laugh. "Some'd say, greed be its own reward!" "They'd be wrong."

  "I'd expect you to say that, fool boy." In the blink of an eye his laugh was gone, his face a profound scowl. With surprising grace for a one-legged old man, he rose to his feet and snapped his cutlass from its sheath. "Ye learned from Deudermont, righteous old fart that he is."

  "I learned much from Captain Deudermont," I answered indignantly. "He is a good man, one of many I've known, and all of them far better than you."

  "Don't ye know better'n to insult a man holding a sword?" He brandished his blade but made no move to strike.

  I waited, staring into that scowl, goading him with my eyes, challenging him to take the swing. But the cutlass did not fall.

  "Well, perhaps yer captain'll pay yer ransom then. And my greed," he practically spat the word, as if it were distasteful to speak, "will be rewarded." He turned as if to leave, taking one of the torches from its sconce.

  "Deudermont is not my captain," I said. "And he would not pay pirate ransom even if he were."

  The old man stopped in his tracks and turned slowly toward me. "Yerself better start speakin' again, and ye better start speakin' fast, else I'll cut yer head from yer shoulders."

  "Perhaps. But I have a question for you. What is your name?"

  "Ye haven't earned enough of my respect to know it," he spat. "Now talk. Tell me of this artifact. Where did ye get it, and where is it? We ain't found it on ye when we pulled ye from the drink."

  "You want the artifact?" I said. "Well, then, you should know its whole bloody story."

  Chapter Seven

  I know nothing of my birth. I know nothing of my parents, siblings, neighbors. I do not know what day I was born, nor the name or location of my first home.I do not know because when I was an infant, raiders attacked my hometown. They burned all the buildings, and killed all the people.

  Somehow, I survived.

  My parents' house had a secret room in the basement-a cellar where they kept their fine elven wines-and my mother hid me there. When the house was set on fire, the debris fell in front of the cellar door and blocked it. I lay down there, or so I was told, wrapped in one of my mother's traveling cloaks, crying.

  The day following the raid, a stranger to the village rode into town alone and searched the rubble. He later told me that when he found me, a single, smoldering chunk of wood lay beside me-a piece of a ceiling beam that had fallen-and it had missed me by mere inches, but had kept me warm. I was alive, awake, staring at him. I even smiled at him, he told me. He smiled back then gently lifted me and carried me away from that ruined place.

  We rode hard for a day and a night to the south, into the High Forest. His horse ran tirelessly, swift and surefooted even as night fell and the darkness of the old forest deepened.

  The man delivered me into the safety of a small cave, into the arms of a skilled healer. Elbeth, she was called, and she was a caretaker of the forest-a druid. The man delivered me then rode away, and Elbeth never spoke a word of him again.

  From that day on, Elbeth fed me-mostly the fruits and berries that grew wild throughout the area-and she kept me clothed and sheltered. She taught me to speak, and showed me the ways of the forest animals.

  "Lucky child," Elbeth called me. I had no real name, and she had no inclination to give me one. A name did not define a person, she said. Instead, it merely marked things for recognition, like the beasts and the trees, and she needed no help to recognize me.

  The anniversary of my arrival in the forest served as my birthday. The sixth of those days dawned dimly, the skies overcast with dense clouds. The rain began about noontime. The skies grew darker and darker as rumbles of summer thunder rolled through the trees.

  Lightning pierced the sky as a figure strode to the mouth of our little cave, the brilliant bolts illuminating his silhouette, revealing his elf features. His skin was the golden red of an oak leaf in the early autumn, his hair the black of a raven's wing, long and silky and whipping in the rising wind. He moved with grace, and when he spoke his voice was soft and kind. But his eyes betrayed the lie behind that softness. They were dark, and hard, and empty of life.

  "You cannot have him," Elbeth said before the strange elf could speak.

  "That is not for you to decide, witch," he replied.

  "I did not decide," she said. "He came to my door, and I sheltered him, and he needs my shelter still. So here he will stay. You cannot have him-you may not take him."

  The elf s hand moved to his shoulder-toward the hilt of the sword sheathed against his back.

  Elbeth laughed. "You wish to fight me, do you? Here, now, in my grove, in my home, you think you can defeat me?" She laughed again, and there was weight in her voice.

  A flash and a tremendous burst of thunder shook the cave. I jumped, so startled that I tripped over my own feet and landed hard on my backside.

  The elf scowled, again reaching for the hilt of his sword, and again stopping short. He started to speak then looked down at a spot on the ground less than five feet in front of him, blackened and charred where the lightning bolt had struck. In front of him-inside the cave.

  "The next one does not miss," Elbeth said, her voice steady.

  Still scowling, the strange elf turned on his heel and strode away from the cave.

  As soon as he was gone, the wind whipped into a furious gale and the downpour began.

  Elbeth turned to me. "Let's have some supper, shall we? It is your birthday, after all."

  "Who was that?" I asked.

  I wanted to ask about the lightning as well. Elbeth had told me lightning prefers to hit the tallest object in an area, yet we were in a cave at the base of a hill surrounded by tall trees and the bolt had found its way through. But she seemed not to worry, so I took comfort in her confidence.

  "He is none of your concern," she answered. "Just an old acquaintance." She waved her hand, spoke a few words, and suddenly the stone slab that served as a table was covered with a feast- sweet, sun-ripened fruits from the forest and a rare treat: heavy, sugared cream.

  I dug right in. Elbeth stood at the mouth of the cave for a few moments, singing to the forest rain before she came to join me.

  Despite the rain, the air was warm, and as always, the company was pleasant. Elbeth had a warm smile and hearty laugh, and our friends- small woodland creatures-joined us whenever we had a feast. I especially loved the chipmunks and squirrels, little rodents running up the sides of our cave as if gravity did not effect them. One particular chipmunk loved me too-or at least loved the berries and nuts I would save from my meals to share with him. He grabbed a berry off our stone table then ducked into a corner to nibble on it. I laughed at his boldness and tossed him a few more.

  As darkness fell, with the rain continuing as hard as ever, the food ran out-though we were all long since full-and the animals cleared out to find their own shelters. I settled into my soft goose down bed to sleep.

  When I awoke, I could not tell the hour. It was night and the rain continued, perhaps even more heavily, and the fire inside the cave had been doused. Elbeth crouched by the doorway, looking out into the forest. Something was amiss-I could tell instantly.

  The forest was far too bright. Orange light seemed to pour in from every direction, despite the rain and the late hour. I pulled myself from my bed and crawled to the mouth of the cave.

  The sight that greeted me was the most frightening thing I had ever seen. Sheets of flame rose up against the downpour. In all directions, the forest was ablaze; howls of the woodland creatures pierced the air. I took Elbeth's hand, but the cold sweat that covered it did little to comfort my fears. I looked at her face and saw, to my surprise, that her eyes were closed.

  Not sure what to do, I closed my eyes, too. I focused on the sounds, and after only a moment I heard what Elbeth was listening to: a voice.

  "Come out of your cave, witch," said the voice- the same voice I had heard earlier that day, the voice of that strange elf. "Come out of your cave, and let us see who is the stronger. Or sit and wait and let me burn the whole forest around you."