Then the halfling knew his error.

The onyx statuette, the link to Guenhwyvar, still lay on the smoky bridge in Tarterus.

Regis turned himself about, struggling against the pull of the planar tunnel’s currents. He saw the darkness at the back end of the tunnel and could guess the risks of reaching through. He could not leave the statuette, not only for fear of losing his magnificent feline friend, but in revulsion at the thought of some foul beast of the lower planes gaining control over Guenhwyvar. Bravely he poked his three-fingered hand through the closing portal.

All of his senses jumbled. Overwhelming bursts of signals and images from two planes rushed at him in a nauseating wave. He blocked them away, using his hand as a focal point and concentrating all of his thoughts and energies on the sensations of that hand.

Then his hand dropped upon something hard, something vividly tangible. It resisted his tug, as though it were not meant to pass through such a gate.

Regis was fully stretched now, his feet held straight down the tunnel by the incessant pull, and his hand stubbornly latched to the statuette he would not leave behind. With a final heave, with all the strength the little halfling had ever summoned—and just a tiny bit more—he pulled the statuette through the gate.

The smooth ride of the planar tunnel transformed into a nightmarish bounce and skip, with Regis hurtling head over heels and deflecting off the walls, which twisted suddenly, as if to deny him passage. Through it all, Regis clutched at only one thought: keep the statuette in his grasp.

He felt he would surely die. He could not survive the beating, the dizzying swirl.

Then it died away as abruptly as it had begun, and Regis, still holding the statuette, found himself sitting beside Guenhwyvar with his back to an astral tree. He blinked and looked around, hardly believing his fortune.

“Do not worry,” he told the panther. “Your master and the others will get back to their world.” He looked down at the statuette, his only link to the Prime Material Plane. “But how shall I?”

While Regis floundered in despair, Guenhwyvar reacted differently. The panther spun about in a complete circuit and roared mightily into the starry vastness of the plane. Regis watched the cat’s actions in amazement as Guenhwyvar leaped about and roared again, then bounded away into the astral nothingness.

Regis, more confused than ever, looked down at the statuette. One thought, one hope, overrode all others at that moment.

Guenhwyvar knew something.

With Drizzt taking a ferocious lead, the three friends charged along, cutting down everything that dared to rise in their path. Bruenor and Wulfgar fought wildly, thinking that the drow was leading them to Catti-brie.

The bridge wound along a curving and rising route, and when Bruenor realized its ascending grade, he grew concerned. He was about to protest, to remind the drow that Catti-brie had fallen below them, but when he looked back, he saw that the area they had started from was clearly above them. Bruenor was a dwarf accustomed to lightless tunnels, and he could detect the slightest grade unerringly. They were going up, more steeply now than before, and the area they had left continued to rise above them.

“How, elf?” he cried. “Up and up we go, but down by what me eyes be telling me!”

Drizzt looked back and quickly understood what Bruenor was talking about. The drow didn’t have time for philosophical inquiries; he was merely following the emanations of the scepter that would surely lead them to a gate. Drizzt did pause, though, to consider one possible quirk of the directionless, and apparently circular, plane.

Another demodand rose up before them, but Wulfgar swatted it from the bridge before it could even ready a strike. Blind rage drove the barbarian now, a third burst of adrenaline that denied his wounds and his weariness. He paused every few steps to look about, searching for something vile to hit, then he rushed back to the front, beside Drizzt, to get the first whack at anything trying to block their path.

The swirling smoke parted before them suddenly, and they faced a lighted image, blurry, but clearly of their own plane.

“The gate,” Drizzt said. “The scepter has kept it open. Bruenor will pass through first.”

Bruenor looked at Drizzt in blank amazement. “Leave?” he asked breathlessly. “How can ye ask me to leave, elf? Me girl’s here.”

“She is gone, my friend,” Drizzt said softly.

“Bah!” Bruenor snorted, though it sounded as more of a sniffle. “Don’t ye be so quick to make such a claim!”

Drizzt looked upon him with sincere sympathy, but refused to relinquish the point or change his course.

“And if she were gone, I’d stay as well,” Bruenor proclaimed, “to find her body and carry it from this eternal hell!”

Drizzt grabbed the dwarf by the shoulders and squared up to face him. “Go, Bruenor, back to where we all belong,” he said. “Do not diminish the sacrifice that Catti-brie has made for us. Do not steal the meaning from her fall.”

“How can ye ask me to leave?” Bruenor said with a sniffle that he did not mask. Wetness glistened the edges of his gray eyes. “How can ye—”

“Think not of what has passed!” Drizzt said sharply. “Beyond that gate is the wizard that sent us here, the wizard that sent Catti-brie here!”

It was all Bruenor Battlehammer needed to hear. Fire replaced the tears in his eyes, and with a roar of anger he dove through the portal, his axe leading the way.

“Now—” Drizzt began, but Wulfgar cut him short.

“You go, Drizzt,” the barbarian replied. “Avenge Catti-brie and Regis. Finish the quest we undertook together. For myself, there will be no rest. My emptiness will not fade.”

“She is gone,” Drizzt said again.

Wulfgar nodded. “As am I,” he said quietly.

Drizzt searched for some way to refute the argument, but truly Wulfgar’s grief seemed too profound for him to ever recover.

Then Wulfgar’s gaze shot up, and his mouth gaped in horrified—and elated—disbelief. Drizzt spun about, not as surprised, but still overwhelmed, by the sight before him.

Catti-brie fell limply and slowly from the dark sky above them.

It was a circular plane.

Wulfgar and Drizzt leaned together for support. They could not determine if Catti-brie was alive or dead. She was wounded gravely, at the least, and even as they watched, a winged demodand swooped down and grabbed at her leg with its huge talons.

Before a conscious thought had time to register in Wulfgar’s mind, Drizzt had Taulmaril bent and sent a silver arrow into flight. It thundered into the side of the demodand’s head just as the creature took hold of the young woman, blasting the thing from life.

“Go!” Wulfgar yelled at Drizzt, taking one stride. “I see my quest now! I know what I must do!”

Drizzt had other ideas. He slipped a foot through Wulfgar’s legs and dropped in a spin, driving his other leg into the back of the barbarian’s knees and tripping Wulfgar down to the side, toward the portal. Wulfgar understood the drow’s intentions at once, and he scrambled to regain his balance.

Again Drizzt was the quicker. The point of a scimitar nicked in under Wulfgar’s cheekbone, keeping him moving in the desired direction. As he neared the portal, just when Drizzt expected him to try some desperate maneuver, the drow drove a boot under his shoulder and kicked him hard.

Betrayed, Wulfgar tumbled into Pasha Pook’s central chamber. He ignored his surroundings, grabbed at the Taros Hoop and shook it with all his strength.

“Traitor!” he yelled. “Never will I forget this, cursed drow!”

“Take your place!” Drizzt yelled back at him from across the planes. “Only Wulfgar has the strength to hold the gate open and secure. Only Wulfgar! Hold it, son of Beornegar. If you care for Drizzt Do’Urden, and if ever you loved Catti-brie, hold the gate!”